


So Happy Together (How Is The Weather?)

by InsertSthMeaningful



Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies)
Genre: Accidental Plot, Alemando, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Still Have Powers, Canon Disabled Character, Charles Xavier has a Ph.D in Adorable, Charles Xavier in a Wheelchair, Destique, Edie Is The Best And Most Loving And Most Doting Mother Evereverever, Edie lives!, Erik Logic Is The Best Logic, Erik is a Fertile Bastard, F/F, Ficlet Collection, Fluff, M/M, Old!cherik, Power Swap, in chapter 21, look for the flower symbolism!, mutants in love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-01
Updated: 2020-03-31
Packaged: 2021-02-27 22:01:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 31
Words: 51,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22972954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InsertSthMeaningful/pseuds/InsertSthMeaningful
Summary: A collection of fluffy ficlets for the Nothing Is So Beautiful As Spring Fluff Challenge.Charles Xavier and Erik Lehnsherr meet and fall in love just as spring arrives at the School on Graymalkin Lane. This is their story spanning decades, told in snapshots about building a future for mutantdom and enjoying the most flourishing of all seasons.
Relationships: Armando Muñoz/Alex Summers, Erik Lehnsherr/Charles Xavier, Irene Adler (X-Men)/Raven | Mystique
Comments: 277
Kudos: 58
Collections: Nothing Is So Beautiful As Spring Challenge 2020





	1. Hey Stranger

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to [Librata](https://archiveofourown.org/users/librata) for running this challenge! Without you, dear, we would drown in angst 🥰  
> Title taken from the song with basically the same name xD I like this version best: [Happy Together covered by Gerard Way and Ray Toro](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHfUncFeeK4). Give it a listen if you feel like it, it always cheers me up (:

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 1 - Thaw 
> 
> A mysterious stranger frees Charles' wheelchair from a muddy flowerbed.

“Ah, bloody- Logan! _Logan_!” Charles let out a frustrated sigh and yanked at his wheels one last time. They didn’t budge. “Goddammit.”

He leaned back in his chair, popped his spine, then bent down to assess the situation once again. Mud. Or rather, thawed earth. He really should have known better than to manoeuvre _that_ close to the flowerbed, because now he was stuck here, with brown sludge encasing his wheels and neither his School’s sports instructor nor any of his kids in sight. _Well done, Prof_.

Around him, the gardens of Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters (as the nameplate attached to the gate post only a few feet from him proclaimed) were bathing in the golden light of the weak early-spring sun, and some songbirds had already come out to greet the new season with their intermingling rhapsodies. From somewhere behind a thicket of trees, children’s voices could be heard, squealing in excitement and elation. Today was their first outdoor training session, and Charles had thought it would be a nice distraction from his headmaster duties to accompany them for a bit.

Obviously, he had been wrong.

With a groan, he loosened the suffocatingly tight scarf around his neck and put it on his lap (what had he been thinking of dressing so warmly anyway, _spring_ had just arrived after all), then closed his eyes and let his mind flow outwards, over the damp grass, the young flower buds, the still bare twigs of the oak trees and beeches towards the cluster of bright minds a few hundred yards from where he had got stuck. And there he was, outlined by thoughts older than his physical appearance would make you expect: Logan, administering two dozen squats to the youngsters under his care at that very moment. Charles smiled. He would so very sorry to disturb one of his oldest teachers in doing his duties, but he had a feeling the pupils wouldn’t share his concerns.

Before he could disturb _anyone_ though, a throat suddenly being cleared at his side abruptly pulled him back to the anchorage of his own body. Charles looked to his right, saw no one on the English lawn, looked to his left- and was met with the most stunning sight he had seen _in years_.

There, just behind the waist-high drystone wall bordering the School grounds, stood a man, a man who hadn’t been there only a minute ago. A tall, svelte, beautiful man, in a grey winter’s coat with matching fedora and scarf. His features were angular, as if they had been cut from marble and ivory, and his eyes, oh dear, his _eyes_ were quite something. Not blue, but not green either, and not quite grey, but a swirl of bright spring colours. And even though the man’s lips weren’t smiling, his _eyes_ were.

“Good morning,” he finally said when Charles would only stare and not dare utter a word in fear of scaring away this mirage like a shy bird. “Am I mistaken when I believe that you are in need of help?”

“Oh.” Charles felt an embarrassed smile hijack his lips. What was he doing here anyway, unabashedly staring at a stranger like this? “Oh, well, you are not wrong, yes. I-” He gestured at the handrails of his wheels. “It’s not like I haven’t been in this chair for years and know how to handle it, but well, what can I say... _spring_ came early.”

He got a knowing nod for his efforts. “Far too warm for this time of the year. It’s only March and the ground is already thawing.” The man’s voice was deep, smooth, warm, and almost unnoticeably accented as he spoke. Then, with one liquid motion, he took his hands from his coat pockets – he was wearing leather gloves, very James-Bond-esque ones, as Charles noticed in passing – and wriggled his fingers. “I’m a metallokinetic, I could help. Only if you don’t mind, of course.”

Charles chuckled. “Why, not at all! In fact, I would be immensely grateful.”

“Then so be it.” And as the man splayed his fingers, raised his hands, Charles felt like he was witnessing a miracle, because there it was: a fine, thin smile, making its way onto the mysterious stranger’s lips like a stray sun ray on a rainy day.

Creaking ever so slightly, Charles’ wheelchair lifted one inch off the ground and levitated backwards until its wheels touched solid grassy ground again. There was a humming in the air, like static electricity, and not even the slight spring breeze could disturb it, until it broke off when the man lowered his hand.

“Fascinating,” Charles breathed. “You see, I’m a telepath, and that- I could feel it, you using your powers. Thank you so very much.” Looking up from where his eyes had inevitably been transfixed by his vehicle hovering over the ground, he met those of the stranger. “I believe it’s time we introduced ourselves. Charles Xavier, pleased to meet you.” He only wished he could get up and walk over to offer his hand, but as it was, they would have to do with this slightly awkward introduction.

Finally, the man’s smile widened into a grin, and maybe it was just his imagination, but Charles thought he could see his body sway forward slightly, like a flower would seek the sun. “Oh, now that is a nice surprise. Then you must be the headmaster of Xavier’s School for the Gifted. I’m Erik Lehnsherr, and I’ve come here for a reason… to meet _you_.”


	2. The Daffodil

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 2 - Bloom 
> 
> Erik is introduced to the headmaster's office.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok so apparently this is now sprouting plot??? I have no idea where I'm going with this but I like writing it sooo... Enjoy!

“ _Lehnsherr_. Indeed, the name does ring a bell,” Xavier chattered as they walked respectively wheeled up the broad gravel road to the School’s entrance. “I believe your wife rang us up a week or two ago? To ask if we were still accepting students, which, of course, we are.”

Erik frowned. _Wife?_ Then he remembered. _Right._ “Not my wife, no. You must have spoken to Ruth, my sister. I was… indisposed at that time and therefore unavailable to make the call.” Carefully, he stuffed the reason for why he hadn’t been around to attend to his fatherly duties into a dark, dusty corner of his mind. Of course, Xavier would keep to the Guidelines for Telepathic Individuals established by the government, but Frost had drilled a healthy fear of accidentally projecting his thoughts into him ever since they had started working together.

The mild breeze carried a soft inhale to his ears, and when he looked over to Xavier, the man’s cordial smile had widened almost imperceptibly. “Oh. Your sister. So, you’re not taken?”

His back was being warmed by the late-morning sun and the winter’s chill had almost completely seeped out of the air, and still, a slight shiver travelled down Erik’s spine. Xavier’s voice was rich, deep, with a slight tinge of the Old World. It scared him, frightened him to even think about the possibility, but… Erik thought he could easily come to like it. “No. Happily divorced.”

“Ah. Well, in that case, the School is of course happy to provide support if you wish so. We host seminars for single parents with mutant kids every first Friday of the month, we keep in close contact with the State’s helplines for education, _and_ our daycare structure here in Westchester encourages the children to form bonds both with their fellow students and their teachers, especially if they choose to stay in our boarding school system. What do you think, would that be an option suited to your son’s or daughter’s needs?”

Now, they were only a few paces from the doorstep of the – honestly – _awe-inspiring_ mansion housing Xavier’s School, and Erik felt his heartbeat take up speed. Why would an establishment such as this one accept his children? Sure, they were his little sunshines, each of them a gift he wished he would never have to see leave, but where would he get the money from? Surely education focused so intensely on the accommodation of their mutations would cost a fortune.

His throat was dry. He swallowed, then said, “Three daughters, actually. And one son.”

Charles Xavier, who had just reached the heavy-looking oak doors and was engaging what looked to be a facilitating opening mechanism, stopped, turned, looked at him with those eyes mirroring the sky’s own rich, wistful blue. “You’ve got… four children? And all of them with mutations?” There was wonder in his voice, written all over his features. Erik didn’t know if this was a good or a bad thing.

“Yes. Yes, and I-” _I don’t know what to do anymore, I love them so much but it’s time I gave them a better life, because I’m only one father and they are four children growing up in a world that hates them for their genes_ \- “I’m searching for a place where they can interact with their kind more freely than in New York City.”

“Well,” Xavier said and resumed working on the lock mechanism, “then you’ve come to just the right place, my friend.” And as the doors finally swung open to reveal the School’s entrance hall, with its intricate staircase and polished tiles and hand-made posters for student socials, the telepath smiled at Erik and asked, “Now, would you like to come to follow me to my study to discuss this matter further? I’ve got some very comfortable armchairs.”

And faced with that smile, those eyes, that expression of _hope_ , what else could Erik do but nod and comply?

There was a chipper knock on the door to Xavier’s headmaster office, and the man in question got a glassy look in his eyes only seconds before a young redhead woman entered with a tablet.

“Oh, Jean! What a nice surprise,” Xavier interrupted his conversation with Erik and turned to the new arrival.

Jean, that had to be the woman’s name, smiled warmly at Xavier, then her gaze glided over to Erik and she asked, “I’m not interrupting something, am I?”

“Well, actually, we just finished discussing the School’s offerings and have now moved on to small talk.” Was Xavier her father, or why were they exchanging such conspicuous, familiar glances? “Oh, but where are my manners? Mr Lehnsherr, this is Jean Grey-” Smiling, Charles took the loaded tablet from the pretty woman’s hands and balanced it precariously onto the chaos of papers and folders on his desk- “my adoptive daughter and currently an apprentice of Hank McCoy, our science teacher. Jean, this is Erik Lehnsherr, and he’s here to inquire about our schooling program for his own children.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Ms Grey said and extended a hand for Erik to shake.

Erik took it and marvelled at the woman’s firm, confident grip. All the people he had seen around the School until now had seemed so happy, so convincingly genuine, both teacher and students, as if they had grown up without the stigma of being genetically different from the rest of the human race. “Nice to meet you, too.” Almost as if they knew they deserved such a life.

Ms Grey’s gaze lingered, something like understanding in her spring green eyes, before she addressed Xavier once again. “I ran into Lin when I was going to make some copies, and she told me you had a visitor. So, I thought you wouldn’t be averse to some tea and biscuits. Also-” She nodded to a small, fragile-looking vase in which two twigs of pussy willow and one daffodil were propped up- “she told me Ororo’s garden told _her_ that it wanted to give him a welcome gift.” And with that, she shot Erik one last friendly smile, then dismissed herself with a nod and slipped out of the door.

They returned to their small talk after that. The exceptionally warm weather, spring slowly awakening, mutant politics, their shared interest in chess and classic literature. It was warm and cosy in the study, and Xavier had been right: The armchair he had offered Erik was indeed very comfortable, with its silky pillows and fluffy backrest. The tea Ms Grey had supplied them with was good, too, a strong brew, it’s flavour only enhanced by the pristine white cream and the shortbread that went with it.

And then there was the daffodil. Its egg-yolk-yellow blossom was radiant, it’s stem a rich, healthy green. Erik felt like he turned to stare at it every five seconds, and when Xavier finally plucked it out of the vase to delicately hold it between his fingers, like it was a precious gem, he realised he had really been doing so for the past few minutes.

“So, you see,” Xavier was saying, looking down at the small flower so full of life, “I believe our School would be a _perfect_ place for your children to learn and live during the week. We want to give them a home, a family where they can truly be themselves.”

Erik only nodded mutely. He was far too transfixed by the fascinating contrast between Xavier’s cerulean eyes and the daffodil’s resplendent blossoms (like the sky and the sun embedded in it) to formulate an intelligible response.

Xavier’s lips pulled back into a smile as he handed the flower over to Erik, their fingers brushing for what seemed like eternity. “We want our children to _bloom_.” 


	3. Twig

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 3 - Bird 
> 
> Enter Erik's four kids.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't even know what this ridiculousness is anymore.

“Anya Nina Lehnsherr, _what_ have I been telling you about taking your raven out of her cage when we’re driving?”

“I don’t know. I forgot,” Anya grumbled and smoothed the heel of her hand over Twig’s midnight feathers. “And Papa, you know she’s not a raven, she’s a _crow_.”

“Difference,” Twig croaked approvingly. “Crow, not raven! Big difference.”

Groaning, her father took one hand from the steering wheel and pinched the bridge of his nose, as he always did when he was annoyed, or frustrated, or tired, or just in any way feeling not well. “What did she just- No, no, hold that thought, I don’t even want to know. Anya, I _told_ you that you should leave her in the cage!”

“Because you could make an accident?” Lorna – Anya’s youngest sister, a metalbender like Papa and the most annoying being ever in existence – piped up from the passenger seat.

The back of Papa’s head moved from side to side in what she knew to be sheer exasperation. “Nein, Sternschnuppe. You know that’ll never happen, not when I’m behind the wheel. I’m talking about the damage Anya’s pet will leave behind on the _leather_ _seats_.”

“Twig is _not_ my pet, Papa!” She couldn’t believe it. He had done it again, even though she had _told_ him a thousand times, had _told_ him that Twig found that designation insulting and she did, too. “She’s my friend! Oh, just- I’m _not_ talking to you anymore.”

“That’s what she said,” she could hear him grumble as she fished her headphones from her denim jacket’s pocket, “like the three times before that this week. No, no, Erik, you’re the worst father, better don’t start counting.”

It was a struggle tugging her phone out of from under the luggage piled high on the other backseats, but with Twig flattening herself on her lap, Anya managed just fine. And then, just as she had finally selected her favourite playlist – the one with the screamo songs – and before she could tap on shuffle, Lorna’s wail of “No, Paps, you’re the _best_ father _evereverever,_ Anya’s a _liar_ -” cut through to her.

Her screen almost went to shambles with the force she used to blessedly get the music to start. Oh, how she hated being seventeen and stuck with a nine-year-old sibling.

Only, the worst was yet to come: For the rest of her life (well, if you considered the time span in which you went to high school and then college your life), she would have to leave all the friends she had in Big Apple and go to the same fucking school as her younger siblings. Only two weeks ago, Papa had visited that School especially for muties like her (what was that even supposed to mean, would they just get locked up in their rooms 24/7 and only receive education through online tutoring?) and then had proceeded to sign them all up, her and Wanda and Pietro and, last but not least, Lorna.

And now, they were driving there, the twins some distance behind them in Tante Ruth’s car because they had amassed so much luggage Papa had deemed it impossible to transport all of it in his run-down VW.

Oh yes, Anya was not happy. Not at all. And as she gingerly stroked Twig’s beak, just like her crow-friend liked it, she decided she would make sure no one in her vicinity was happy, either.

Anya realized the improbability of that resolution when they arrived at Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters after thirty more minutes of driving in sullen silence (not so much silence in her case, because she had probably just wrecked her eardrums with how high she had turned up the volume). It wasn’t actually the drab high-security prison with barbed wire and high grey concrete walls she had expected, but a lovely – if a bit too upper-class-looking – mansion. Its walls were still high, but almost every inch of them was overgrown with ivy of a deep emerald green, and there were glass windows and even some alcoves springing forth from them. When she got out of the car Papa had brought to a halt directly in front of the building, birdsong immediately reached her ears, and she heard nothing but the pure joy of life and love reflected in it (and the joy of fucking and having babies and passing on your genes, of course, but she had learned to live with that dark side of her gift). Even Twig, who had a knack for finding the worst in the best, straightened up on her shoulder and chirped with barely veiled excitement, “Pretty place! Let’s stay!”

Then, the School’s heavy oak doors creaked open, and the most beautiful woman Anya had ever seen in her entire damn life walked out, followed by some guy in a wheelchair.

The lady was stunning. Absolutely breath-taking, and pretty, and with fantastic looks, and oh, had Anya already mentioned how stunning she was? Like, her eyes, they were of that flaming yellow you usually only found in those of a lioness, and the scales covering her from head to toes looked velvety like those of a snake, of such a healthy radiant blue that Anya thought she might fall to her knees right then and there and pledge herself to the woman forever.

Only that would have been, like, extremely embarrassing, so she turned around and started helping her Papa dragging their luggage out of the trunk.

Five minutes later, the rest of the brood was lined up on the gravel courtyard, and the guy in the wheelchair (who had turned out to be their new headmaster, Charles Xavier, and actually a pretty decent fellow in Anya and even Twig’s opinion) turned to their Papa and said, “Oh, I’m really so very glad to finally meet your off-springs, Erik.”

At that, Anya turned to shoot Pietro to her right a questioning look (who _was_ this man that he used so stilted words?) and was promptly elbowed in the side by Wanda on her other side. Lorna snickered, and a quiet smile had slipped onto the beautiful woman’s face. Anya turned back around.

Wait. Her father wasn’t blushing, or was he?

“That means they haven’t scared you off yet, then. Good to hear,” Papa finally replied and cleared his throat, then waved Anya and the others over. “You four behave yourselves, yes? Don’t embarrass your poor old father with your bad manners.”

Anya chose to remain silent while Pietro gave a salute and a “Yes, Papa,” Wanda chirped, “No, Paps,” and Lorna just nodded her head so enthusiastically Anya almost feared it would fall off.

“And that’s about the chaotic energy you can expect from them for the rest of their stay,” Papa informed headmaster Xavier matter-of-factly while the pretty lady smiled on in the background.

“I’m sure it will be a welcome enrichment to our School’s daily routine, my dear friend, considering they carry _your_ genes,” Xavier returned, and now Anya _absolutely_ had to turn to their siblings and give them the Are-They-Seriously-Flirting-In-Front-Of-Us-And-Awkwardly-At-That? look.

In response, Pietro blushed, Wanda smirked and Lorna resumed her fear-inducing nodding. Great. Just great.

“Now,” Xavier’s silky voice cut through their silent communication, “Raven, could you please show our new arrivals their rooms? I called on Jean to help you with their suitcases, and Erik and I will retire to my study before joining you in the common room. Um, just for fifteen minutes, we still need to go over some formalities.” He gave Papa a wide smile at that, one that made Twig croak out a quiet “Mating call,” then dig her claws deeper into Anya’s shoulder.

And gosh, didn’t that make her want to fall on the floor wheezing until her head was red. Even a _bird_ could see what was going on, and what was going on was that her father was falling so hard he would either end up with a broken heart or a new wedding band on his ring finger.

The most astounding thing though was that Anya found herself minding this new development not one bit, and just as Raven waved for them to follow them inside and to the dorms, Xavier’s voice calling out to her one last time confirmed her certainty that everything would play out to be more than fine.

“Oh, and Anya,” he said and gifted her with one of his wide, warm smiles, too, “please tell your crow that he or she is more than welcome here, too.”

And on the whole walk through the School’s halls, Anya found that she couldn’t stop smiling.


	4. Ororo's Garden

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 4 - Garden 
> 
> Turns out every single teacher in the School is just like "NOW KISS!!!" at our two boys.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *whistling* Couldn't resist the Destique...

Sometimes, Raven was jealous of Ororo’s Garden.

It was not the I-Think-I-Would-Have-Deserved-That-Garden-More-Than-You-Do kind of jealousy, or the I-Think-I-Might-Be-An-Asshole-To-You-For-The-Rest-Of-Our-Lives-Because-You’ve-Got-A-Pretty-Garden-And-I-Don’t kind of jealousy, more the Wow-I-Wished-I-Was-As-Disciplined-As-You kind of jealousy. So, the good kind of jealousy, in Raven’s opinion. She just really liked what Ororo had done with the once-barren patch of soil behind the School’s baseball court, the one that their baseline gardener of twenty years had shrugged of as beyond salvation because of its sandy composition and partial constant shade thrown over it from a fifty feet tall fir tree.

But Ororo taught biology and philosophy, and if there was something a biology and philosophy teacher could not accept, it was the abandonment of a seemingly hopeless cause.

So, one beautiful spring afternoon a few years back, a procession of volunteering students and teachers had made its way to the patch of ground destined to be Ms Munroe’s new hobby horse, equipped with various fertilisers, shovels, rakes and what looked to be a million other garden tools. And, of course, their mutant powers – arborkinesis, botanopathy, weather manipulations, telekinesis, thermal control on both sides of the temperature spectrum and, less useful in the situation but still appreciated, sonic scream (Raven actually harboured the suspicion that Sean was only looking to find somewhere to plant new weed, but if that had really been the case, he had been exceptionally good at hiding his intentions). The promise of an interesting field day had spawned enthusiasm in all age groups of the mansion, which had lead to an overabundance of helping hands, which _in turn_ had led to Ororo’s conclusion that in the future, she would tend to her garden alone and only summon help if she really couldn’t do without it.

The result was a flowering, blooming, thriving patch of colour posing a stark contrast to the sea of green surrounding the rest of the School, and ever since Raven hadn’t seen a day when Ororo didn’t smile. Even if it was winter and only the brown and grey remnants of twigs, leaves and blossoms kept the snowfall outside company, the woman would go out and inspect her garden, like it was her beautiful, freedom-loving child.

One day, as they were helping the pupils do the dishes, Raven had given voice to that thought in front of Charles. And her brother-at-heart had smiled and nodded. “I think that even on dark days, it’s a reminder to her that there is beauty and life in the world, life that needs protection and care. And that all of this life is worth fighting for.”

Then, little Bobby had got his hands frozen stuck in the dishwater, chaos had ensued and only in the evening had Raven finally found the time to answer, “So that means that what Ororo’s Garden is to her, the School must be to you.”

Her brother smiling at her as though she had just caught a glimpse of the truest depth of his soul was always a rare occasion. This had been such an instance, and she wouldn’t have wanted to do without it.

Now, Raven was not only jealous of Ororo’s Garden, she was also not one to eavesdrop, because she respected people’s privacy and lived after the principle of “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.”

Yes, yes she did. Only sometimes, she took the spiritual freedom to make an exception.

Such as now, in that very moment when she walked around the fir tree because Irene had sent her to get oregano from Ororo’s Garden for a new recipe she wanted to try out. And really, if the FBI had been around when she shrank back behind the cover of the fir’s low-hanging twigs, they would have asked to employ her just for her quick thinking.

Because there they were, sitting comfortably on the small bench facing the extensive grounds beyond the baseball court: her brother and Mr Lehnsherr.

Raven snorted. She should have anticipated to trip over them _somewhere_ , because after all, it was a Saturday, and Erik Lehnsherr had come over every weekend to visit his kids for all of the past three weeks the four had been with them now. So, after spending some quality time with his brood, he and Charles would often retire to chat, have a cup of tea, play a game of chess.

Raven knew because after every visit, Charles would talk her ear off about the man. How intriguing he was, how sweet with kids – both his own and those of the School -, how intelligent, how handsome, and oh, Raven, have you noticed his _eyes_ yet?

Frankly, it was unnerving. And also kinda sweet, and cute, and heart-warming, because Raven knew how lonely Charles sometimes got, despite taking care of more than a hundred students and coordinating a team of about a dozen teachers and caretakers. Somehow, she thought Mr Lehnsherr had introduced himself into their lives at just the right moment.

Carefully, so as to not alarm the two love-birds of her presence, she peeked over to them from behind her cover. They had their faces turned towards the early-afternoon sun, only occasionally looking over to let their eyes meet when they exchanged a few short words. Apparently, Charles was pulling his mind-conversation trick again, a strategy he liked to use when he was too tired to talk- or too in love to not be constantly groping at his subject of attention’s thoughts.

Mr Lehnsherr though seemed completely at ease, relaxed against the backrest as he was and slowly but steadily reshaping the two ball bearings he always had with him when he visited.

Transfixed, Raven stared as the glinting steel flowed together, then apart, twisted in the air, was nebulised in one instant and pulled back together in the next. She had seen Lorna attempt to exert similar fine control, but the nine-year-old was still far from such precision.

However, in one point, Charles was right: With her father’s genes, the girl would be sure to become a mutant powerful enough to move the world if she so wished.

Then, Raven noticed the chessboard propped up between the two men, how the pieces must have been used for less than three moves, and _then_ she noticed the casual way Mr Lehnsherr had his arm thrown across the bench’s backrest and over Charles’ shoulders, unconsciously rubbing small circles into the fabric of Charles’ thick wool cardigan.

Only barely suppressing an excited squeal, she whipped out her phone, took a shaky picture and sent it first to _X-Mansion Xcitement_ (the teachers’ gossip chat with everyone in it safe for Charles), then to _Missus xoxo_ (Irene’s contact) with the caption “Guys it’s HAPPENING OMG DEE WAS RIGHT!!!” Then, just on cue, she looked up to – oh holy shit oh my fucking god – see _Charles lean in, cup Lehnsherr’s clean-shaven cheek_ (sometimes she wondered if the man had escaped a fashion magazine’s headquarters, he always looked so dapper) _and plant a small, shy kiss on the other man’s lips._

She looked away after that, her hand over her heart in a futile attempt to calm its racing thumps, because somehow her Eww-Gross-Big-Brother-Is-Making-Out-With-Someone-Where’s-The-Bleach response programmed in her teenage hood had never quite been turned off, but having witnessed her current OTP’s first kiss made her giddy with joy. Charles had found someone again! (He had already found many people, but somehow, not one of them had felt as… _promising_ as Mr Lehnsherr did.)

Suddenly, a slight nudge at her mind’s fringes made her heart do a double-take. Damn, she had been found out.

_Yes, Raven, accurate observation skills you have there. Do you think you maybe could give us some privacy for half an hour more?_

Oh well, the oregano could wait.

_Sure, brother dear. Enjoy the…_ scenery, _yes?_

A wave of amused indignation shoved her on her feet after that, and she ran the whole way back to the mansion, crying with laughter. Oh, Destiny would be _so smug_ that her prediction had finally become reality _,_ and it would show on her face _so hard,_ but Raven just knew how to handle that problem.

After all, her brother wasn’t the only one who knew how to kiss.


	5. Passover

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 5 - Party 
> 
> The School's OTP has finally got together, and that has to be celebrated.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did research on the subject of Passover and seder and really hope I am not offending anyone by using it for the purposes of my writing. If there should be something wrong, please let me know in the comments! 
> 
> Also I don't know what I'm doing anymore (I- all the side pairings, I don't know how that happened), but I still hope you lovelies enjoy it :)

“We should throw a party,” Raven’s voice cut through the gentle pitter-patter of the rain on the windowpanes and the subdued chatter in the teacher’s lounge.

“Wha- Beg your pardon?” Charles looked up from the essays he was marking and across the room to where his sister had propped her hip against the table, the tea kettle boiling to her left. Erik in the chair beside him just snorted and returned to his lecture of the Sunday paper.

“I said, ‘We should throw a party,’ Charles. You should clean your ears someday, _brother dear._ ”

This earned her some further snickering from the teachers and interns dispersed around the room, and she grinned widely at him, her teeth pearly white amidst the indigo of her scales.

Charles sighed. “Raven, I- I _did_ understand what you said, but I didn’t quite catch your meaning. A _party_? At this time of the year?”

“What’s wrong with _this time of the year_?” his sister grumbled at the same time as Scott, their intern for Power Work and Mathematics, spoke up, “I’m with the Professor. I don’t see how a party would make much sense now, either. I mean, it’s _spring_ , great, the sun is coming back and all, but- Well, we could make something in summer, at the end of the semester-”

“Spoilsport,” Logan muttered. Jean, sandwiched between both men, nodded and said, “Scott, you know we talked about this.”

“ _Talked about this_?” Erik’s hand was squeezing his reassuringly, but Charles didn’t want to be reassured. He wanted to know what in the world was going on. “And what, pray tell, is _this_ supposed to mean?”

Silence. All eyes in the room went to Raven, who only hummed innocently, then turned to pour Irene and herself two camomile teas.

 _I’m sorely tempted to just rifle through her memories, and_ then _everybody else’s, until I know what exactly is happening here_ , Charles thought glumly at Erik. His words were met with a quiet sense of resignation, then his lover ( _lover_ , oh how the thought still made Charles’s heart feel all giddy in its cage of ribs) said out loud, “Just give Ms Darkhölme one more minute. I’m sure she will be willing to explain as soon as she’s joined her wife on the couch.”

“Listen to your darling boyfriend, brother,” the woman in question piped up and made a beeline for where Irene was sitting by the window, her beverages carefully balanced on a tray.

Charles groaned. “Please don’t tell me you’re in on this, Erik.”

“I’m not.” With deft fingers, Erik folded his newspaper, then summoned his ball bearings and made them slide over his hands, through the air, back to his hands. It was a nervous habit he had picked up in his youth, Charles had learned, and he found it to be most endearing. “In fact, I’ve been left as much in the dark as you have.”

“Yeah, you two are the exceptions.” Raven had finally taken place beside Irene, one leg comfortably thrown over the other woman’s lap as she leaned back into the cushions and sighed contentedly. “So. Let me explain. You two’ve been the subject of School gossip for some time now – ever since Mr Lehnsherr first showed up here, to be exact – and well, recent _developments_ -” Angel giggled in the back, and even the otherwise so impassible Ororo couldn’t help a cat-got-the-cream smile- “have shown that most of those rumours have come to fruition.”

“Just say they’re basically a married ol’ couple now,” Alex chimed in and promptly got elbowed in the side by Darwin, whose whisper of “Us first, hot stuff,” could be heard in every corner of the room.

(And indeed, the two men managing the School’s public appearance as well as its budget had their wedding scheduled in only a month, as far as Charles could recall. Oh dear, they would have to start thinking about planning soon…)

“Okay, as I said, before I was so rudely interrupted,” Raven continued with a glare of mock-indignation directed towards Alex, “you two are finally a thing! An item! Together, yay! And that’s why we thought a little celebration was in order. Isn’t that so?”

Mumbles of appreciative enthusiasm travelled around the teachers’ lounge, and then Emma gave voice to everybody’s approval when she said, “Exactly. And since part of our student population is Jewish, and Erik is of the same confession, we thought it would be nice to introduce such a tradition to our School for once.”

“Oh? What did you have in mind?” Charles felt his lover’s hand tighten in his as Erik spoke, an inexplicable nausea suddenly present beneath the calm surface of his mind. But before he could inquire via mind-speak, Erik continued, “Were you maybe thinking of the Holocaust Remembrance Day? What a nice occasion indeed.”

All sound in the room died down. It seemed that even the rain suddenly weakened, and as Charles looked over to Ororo, he could see her frown with barely-veiled shock. Nothing could be heard but the birds outside chirping their spring songs, and then the hissing of the coffee machine as it warmed back up.

“Cricket sounds,” Sean finally whispered, closely followed by Angel saying, “Um, well,” and Logan drawing in air between his teeth.

Erik’s short burst of laughter sounded like the bark of a wounded animal. “Oh, my bad. I- It was a joke, nothing more. No, actually, it’s a really good idea. Really nice.”

“We were actually thinking about Passover, Erik,” Emma said tonelessly. “Or something associated with it.”

 _Not now_ , Erik projected at Charles’ plea for entrance, _later, we can discuss this later_ Out loud he said, “That’s a wonderful idea. In fact, there is a kind of gathering at the beginning of Passover that might pass as a party, if we’re going for liberal. I’m not much of a practising Jew myself, but maybe some of your pupils could help with the organisation of a _seder_.”

“What’s that?” Scott asked and batted Logan and Jean’s indecently wandering hands away.

“It’s a special meal with a re-telling of the Exodus. Very inclusive of kids, too, and I’m sure they would like the part about singing and eating sweets. Mine never were at one, but now might just be the time.”

“Alright.” Charles decided it was time to steer them back into less dangerous waters, smiled at everyone and concluded, “It seems we now have something to work towards. Maybe we could ask Katherine Pryde to work with us, decide how much of the tradition we should keep to make it as interesting as possible for the children. Emma, I understand Kitty has formed a strong bond with you over the time period in which you were counselling her?”

“She has.”

Angel looked up from where she had been typing away on her phone. “Okay, just googled it and I think if we do this right it’ll be fu- freaking awesome? Like, Erik, we could do the reading of that Biblical thing in the Common Room, as some sort of sleepover?”

Now this had Logan perking up. “The teens an’ I could lug up the mats from the gym, an’ we could schedule it so laundry day’s directly after. Then they can use their own pillows an’ such, y’know.”

“Is there dancing, with music from the Charts? There must be, for the adolescents,” Ororo mused, and then suddenly everyone had their own ideas to share, and the teachers’ lounge erupted into a chaos of speculations, arguments and planning. Post-Its were unearthed, together with permanent markers and white A3 paper. People perched over the centre table and shouted over the food, the timetable, the logistics.

Charles found that grading his essays had become virtually impossible, because everyone was ambushing Erik for his opinion and the poor man was so obviously overwhelmed by the attention that the ball bearings had been scrunched together into an object of unrecognisable shape. So, he did what he did best, squeezed Erik’s hand and told everyone, “One after the other, yes? Just be calm.”

Outside, the rain receded, until finally, the sun peaked out from behind a cloud and sent the first sun ray since days unto the lands.

And in the evening, when everyone had quieted down a little and were sitting in the Common Room in front of the television, reading, snoozing or actually paying attention to the movie, Irene turned to Charles and whispered, “It will turn out alright. I know it will.”

Charles smiled and thought of Erik, whom he had sent on his way back home with a kiss. Yes, everything would turn out alright. After all, Irene knew it would.

As always, Irene’s prediction ended up to be quite accurate.

Passover was indeed more than successful, with the students all flocking to the cafeteria for an early dinner and then to the Common Room (in the case of the younger ones) for games and sweets, or to the entrance hall (in the case of the adolescents) for music, drinks (non-alcoholic ones because Charles much liked to not have their School shut down by the authorities) and dancing.

Of course, Erik had insisted that they also reserve a nook for the quiet ones, the shy ones, the ones who would much rather read a book or lead a conversation without having to scream their lungs out. And when he wheeled around to check, Charles was glad his lover had insisted.

It wasn’t like there were many occupying the reading room, less than a dozen, in fact. But they had all grouped around a table and were chatting animatedly, Pietro among them, and Charles understood that to them, this safe heaven without hammering music and the peer pressure to be loud and extroverted was the perfect place to meet like-minded people.

He ran (or rather wheeled) into Wanda on the fringe of the dance floor, smiling and with blood-red tendrils of her power trailing behind as waves of excitement crashed off her and against Charles’ shields. Anya, he came across on the landing, where she had cornered an awkward Raven and was talking with her hands, her voice raised high, while Twig could be found glaring jealously from her perch on a bust of one of the Xaviers’ ancestors (Charles had never liked the man’s sour face anyway). And Lorna he finally found in the arms of her father, in the Common room on the first floor where the youngsters were gathered around board games and competing with stubborn fervour.

“It’s all a bit much for her,” Erik murmured to him when Charles transferred himself onto the couch next to him, “all the people talking, and their blood pumping through their veins. She tells me she can feel that, too, now. But in a few minutes she’ll be ready to go again.”

“I can take her for that long, love.” Charles waved to Emma, who was across the room playing Memory with some of their first-formers, then opened his arms and let Lorna crawl into them. He laughed when her green hair tickled him beneath the chin, then sighed contentedly as her tiny arms went to encircle his chest. “There’s a darling girl.”

“Thank you.” Erik had leaned over, was whispering in his ear, and then suddenly he switched to mind-speak. _When Raven said that they wanted to plan a party because of us, and I said that thing, I didn’t mean it. I panicked. Because being Jewish_ and _a mutant is not easy, and I somehow thought it could endanger the School if you actually did a thing-_

“Erik,” Charles breathed back and dusted a kiss onto the corner of his lover’s mouth, steadily rubbing soothing circles over Lorna’s shoulder-blades. _There’s no need to apologise, for any of it. We stand by who we are, and if some people think we don’t have the right to do so, we know how to defend ourselves._

The words that came next from Erik’s lips he would have preferred to capture forever. “I love you. I love you so much, Charles.”

It wasn’t like it was their first time saying it. No, the thing that had bloomed between them had been there for weeks, months already – even Erik’s ( _their_ ) children were getting used to it – so they had basically been obligated to say it, when taking a stroll outside together, when reading together, when lying in bed beside each other. No place for no _I-love-you_ s.

But this was their party, their festivity, just for the sake of their union. And finally, Charles felt like waking to see that his dream had become reality.

“I love you, too,” he sighed back. And then Lorna requested to be let back amidst her friends and classmates, and the moment was over.

Except that it wasn’t. It would never be, going from the way Erik gently rubbed his shoulder as he spoke into the microphone Angel had lent him from the music room’s inventory, or judging from the small smiles he threw Charles’ way as he told the story of the Jew’s flight from Egypt, their trek through the Desert, their hopes, their dreams, their despair, and finally, after the miraculous crossing of the Red Sea, their freedom from persecution and suppression.

All the students listened with rapt attention, and so did the teachers. Charles had to subtly wipe away the occasional tear threatening to spill, and one time even, he looked over to Emma Frost, their otherwise so composed school counsellor, only to see her diamond eyes gleam wet and wide. On her lap, little Bobby and John were snoozing, tiny hands intertwined.

Maybe it hadn’t been what you would call your average party. But Charles found that for him, it was just right. 


	6. Spring Walk

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 6 - Sunlight 
> 
> Two times, Erik fails to convince Charles of going for a walk outside. One time, he doesn't.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm tired. I am also Charles. Someone get me a partner who will drag me outside for fresh air and a walk.

“Charles.” Erik leaned into the door frame of his partner’s study and tried to look nonchalant despite the purple and red finger paint Lorna had smeared all over his shirt. “Have you been outside even _once_ this week?”

The scratching of pen on paper came to a halt. Charles raised his head to meet Erik’s eyes, his own electric blue ones barely veiling the guilt behind them. “Uh, no?”

“Then let’s go for a walk. Lorna just finished her art project, and Anya’s taken the twins to the shopping mall. We’ve got all the time in the world.”

“Erik,” Charles sighed as his lips thinned into a line, “have you looked at the weather? It’s raining cats and dogs, and Ororo’s busy entertaining the students who can’t go home. And also, I really need to mark these essays, and then I need to look at some correspondence with our partner school in Europe, and _then_ -”

“Alright, alright, I get it.” Hands held up in surrender, Erik stalked over to the windows and cracked one open. “But you need fresh air at least. Promise you’ll come out next time? Spend some quality time with your boyfriend?”

Nose scrunching at the cold gust of wind travelling through the room, Charles shrugged. Then, his lips widened into a smirk, and he purred, “You know, if you came over to sit on my lap, then we could still spend some quality time together, without me having to trek out into the cold and wet.” His words were accompanied by a slight nudge at Erik’s mind, the faint idea of clicking the door’s lock shut, and finally all the _things_ Charles could do to him if only he _let him-_

“Fine. But don’t whine to me when the inevitable headache comes on,” Erik grumbled and crossed over to where Charles had wheeled back from his desk.

“I won’t, darling,” his partner lied, then his warm arms encircled Erik’s waist and pulled him down, backside flush against Charles’ chest. “Now, how about we grade some essays together?”

And that was all the warning Erik got before his neck was assaulted by soft, searing lips, and he had to turn around to retaliate, because what his boyfriend could do he could do, too, and maybe even better.

It goes without saying that not many more essays were marked this fine Saturday afternoon.

One week later, Erik looked up from where he was helping Pietro with his French assignment in the Common Room, only to meet eyes with a concerned-looking Emma Frost.

“Again?”

“Again. He’s been giving me second-hand migraines since breakfast. Go take your dearest for a walk, Erik, for everyone’s sake.”

“I will,” Erik agreed and nodded, “I’ll just help Pietro finish this exercise and then I will.”

And he tried. He really did. But when Charles looked up from his paperwork, brows scrunched up in pain, and suggested they just go sit on the couch together and cuddle for a little while because the wind was howling around the walls so savagely that they could be blown off their feet if they even poked their noses outside, then how could Erik possibly say no?

As always, the third time was the charm.

Erik had decided to stay overnight, so it was no surprise to wake with an armful of still-snoozing Charles, considering it was Sunday morning and the headmaster of Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters was surprisingly far from being a morning person. What was a surprise though (and a welcome one at that) was the sunlight streaming in from behind the curtain, slanting over the soft rise and fall of Charles’ chest beneath the bedsheets, over the arm he must have sneaked under Erik’s waist sometime in the course of the night.

Watching as his lover’s lashes fluttered softly in the lull of a dream, Erik quietly raised a hand and inched the curtains back by their brass rings, until he could see the expanse of the blue sky behind their window, cloudless, unguarded, promising the first rainless day since the beginning of the month. He sighed. If the promise of a nice walk in the sun under the trees sprouting their first tiny leaves didn’t get Charles outside, Erik had no idea know what would.

“Charles,” he finally whispered after another fifteen minutes of just studying the man beside him, “Charles. Wake up.” And as his lover wouldn’t stir, he craned his neck to press tiny kisses first along the inner side of his forearm, then his shoulder and finally his jaw. Charles’ skin tasted like paper, like soft wool cardigans and the warmth and shelter you could find in front of a brightly lit fireplace.

All the response he got, though, was Charles screwing his eyes shut and reaching down to pull the blanket over his head. _No._

“Charles. The sun is shining, the birds are tweeting, it’s a beautiful new day. Let’s go for a morning walk?” Erik propped himself up onto his elbow to have a hand free for poking his lover’s side.

 _Don’t you dare_ , Charles’ voice rang through his head, remnants of sleep still clinging to it. _No._ Then, muffled by the blanket, “Get off my back.”

“Charles.”

“ _Erik_.”

Taking a deep breath, Erik leaned down, until his lips were mere inches from where he supposed Charles’ ear to be under the bedsheets. “Sunlight helps our body produce Vitamin D. Vitamin D deficiency can have nasty consequences, and is actually a big part of why so many people get so depressed over the winter months, especially if they never go outside… just like you.”

“Do I-” Jerking the bedsheets from his head, Charles revealed his sour expression- “even _look_ like I’ve got a depression?”

Erik smirked. “Maybe not. But you do look terribly pale.”

“You’re all the sunlight I’ll ever need,” Charles sighed, and then a smile suddenly bloomed on his lips while a hand gripped Erik by the nape of his neck to pull him down into a kiss. Morning breath be damned, he kissed back. If someone said such nice things to him, they did indeed deserve some smooching around.

 _I’ll keep that in mind_ , Charles told him and gripped his neck tighter, pulling at the strands of Erik’s hair curling there.

Erik pulled back when he felt like fainting from never being able to catch his breath. “You better do, if you want to keep me in good spirits.”

“Hmm. what a fickle, beautiful man you are, and how lucky I am to have scored you.” Grinning, Charles propped himself up against the headboard and stretched, before his gaze wandered sideways and out of the window. “Oh? The sun’s out!”

“Quick thinking there, Mr Holmes,” Erik said and earned himself a slap on his biceps.

Charles sniffed in mock-indignation. “I’ve just woken up, Erik, you can’t expect my brain functions to be on full power yet. Breakfast?”

“And then a morning walk,” Erik agreed.

Charles frowned. “I’ve got work to do.”

“Then I’ll drag you outside if I have to.”

“You know I-” With a light smile, Charles raised a hand to his temple and wiggled his fingers- “could make that not happen?”

“I know. I’ll still do it,” Erik retaliated and then bent down to place butterfly kisses on the curve of Charles’ neck, his shoulder, his chest. “I want to take care of you. I want you to be healthy, so I’ll get to keep you as long as possible.”

“Alright. I’ll think about it,” Charles whispered, until his voice gave out and he could say nothing more as Erik’s lips travelled down his chest, over his belly button and under the seam of the blanket.

Charles did indeed think about it. Erik got his walk, and Charles’ skin got the sunlight it so desperately needed.

If there had been something Erik could have wished for, he would have wished for this spring to never end. 


	7. An Unconventional Choice of Name

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 7 - Bumblebee 
> 
> The School gets a new mascot.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One week of this already! Keep up the good work, fellow writers <3

Charles was aware of the fact that he was well-known in the whole School for his good heart and his love for everything that moved. He also had the sneaking suspicion that more often than not, his pupils would use this goodwill of his to their advantage, and that was probably why so many of the dorms were not only inhabited by children but their pets as well. And what he knew, _too_ , was that about 99.999% of the homeless strays roaming the grounds of the mansion were, in fact, not homeless at all, but extensively well-fed and doted upon by both the student body and the teaching and household staff, mostly because he himself had been caught red-handed tending to the cats and dogs and the occasional parrot at large more than once.

But frankly, _this_ was just ridiculous.

“Please,” said the Lehnsherrs in perfect unison, Erik included.

It was Saturday. A fine spring afternoon, with sunshine and blue skies and all that jazz. Charles had been quietly pottering away answering e-mails from parents and others, living his best life. And then, the Lehnsherr family had practically kicked down his door and marched into his study, a mewling ball of fur so tiny you almost had to go search for it with a magnifying glass cradled in Erik’s arms.

“This,” little Lorna had declared with the attitude of a king’s messenger presenting a dispatch to the rabble, “is Bumblebee.”

The madness had only gone downhill from there.

“So,” Charles breathed and stapled his fingers under his chin, “let me sum up: Pietro was taking one of his speed-walks around the grounds when just outside of the gate, he came across this kitten. He then returned to the mansion, grabbed Wanda and brought her out on the lawn to show her his find, not bothering to give notice to anyone else because he thought it was dead.”

“It was definitely not breathing, Dad,” came the guilt-stricken voice of the silver-haired boy at that, but a severe glance from Charles silenced him immediately.

“Wanda proceeded by poking at it with a stick, then crying out that it still lived and had just meowed at her. _Then_ Pietro went in search for Anya, who finally confirmed that the kitten was still alive, which led to Pietro going to seek out his father who, by chance, was just reading to Lorna and didn’t want to leave her behind. And that’s how the whole Lehnsherr family ended up in my office, with a kitten and the request that it be adopted as the School’s mascot.”

“Kinda,” Wanda grumbled and promptly received Lorna’s elbow in the ribs, while Erik just shrugged and Anya spoke in her I’m-Quite-Confident-You-Won’t-Refuse-Me-Because-I-Know-You-Like-Me voice (the same Erik sometimes used on him, now that Charles thought about it), “Yes, we found it on the School grounds, so it belongs here. _And_ its name is Bumblebee, because that’s its favorite plaything.”

“Uh-huh. Very well.” Charles picked up his marker, put it back down. Then, he leaned back and crossed his arms over his chest. “The only problem is… _I don’t believe you._ ”

“Excuse me?” Erik, this time, his gorgeous storm eyes the size of saucers.

“I know it didn’t come from the mansion’s grounds, that’s for sure. You’ve been projecting finding it there way too hard for it to be real.”

“But- But we would never-” Lorna exclaimed, bottom lip trembling dangerously.

“Yes you would,” Charles told her, trying to add a soothing quality to his voice and smiling at the poor girl who was just trying her best. “And I’m not angry at you.”

Pietro huffed. “But you still won’t let us keep it?”

“And it wants to be called _Bumblebee._ _Its pelt is grey all over._ ” Eyebrows raised, Charles ignored the _That’s all the reason you’ve got to say no? Try again, Charles,_ that Erik was shoving at him.

Glaring at him, Wanda curled her hands into fists, tendrils of her powers swishing around her head like snakes. “That’s no fair! It’s really got no home, we swear!”

“Is that so?” Charles asked Erik directly in a tone of voice he hoped was infused with _Don’t-You-Lie-To-Me-Or-I’ll-Make-You-Regret-It-This-Whole-Night_.

“I… Yes. I picked it up on the way home from, well, _work_ , in a cardboard box in front of the supermarket. The shelter said it didn’t have space, when I rang them up, you know, and I thought...” Hand rubbing his neck, Erik trailed off, lowered his eyes and stared at the fragile creature in his arms. “I just thought maybe _we_ had space,” he whispered finally.

 _Oh, he won’t tell you where he works but he’ll readily let you take on responsibility for yet another child to take care of_ , a sour voice whispered at the back of Charles’ head, but he squashed it like you would squash an aggressive ant under your thumb, and instead, he said, “Good. Alright, you’ve persuaded me.”

All hell broke loose as the children cheered and jumped up and down while Erik strode over to him and leaned down to place a firm, warm kiss on Charles’ lips, kitten still in his arms. Then, he took it by the scruff of the neck and lowered it onto Charles’ lap. “Bonding time,” he announced, “it’s going to take to you as all the children do, be assured.”

And indeed, Erik turned out to be right. Anya stayed with him and Erik the whole afternoon while Pietro spread the news of their new family member and Wanda made Lorna bring over a mixture of boiled water, egg yolk, quark and oil to feed to the kitten. Soon, other students started dropping by, the teachers hot on their heels and just as eager. It was a to and fro as if the headmaster’s study was a room at the maternity ward, and about a dozen volunteers’ names were scribbled down so that at the end of the day, the kitten wasn’t left wanting for all kinds of godparents.

 _We still have to take it to the vet, let them look it over for worms and such_ , Charles protested, yawning, when Erik crawled under their bedsheets with their newest mascot still cupped in his hands.

“Bumblebee needs a parent’s warmth, Anya said,” Erik told him. “Are you jealous, Charles?”

“No,” Charles lied and took a feebly mewling Bumblebee from Erik’s hands to set it on his chest and let it burrow its way beneath his chin. “Are you?”

“Unlike you, I’m not gonna lie and will confess that I’m contemplating kittencide right now,” Erik joked, propped up on his elbows as he watched Charles’ futile attempts at reading with a purring package of fur under his jaw.

“You better don’t, or the entire School population will gang up against you and lynch you,” Charles jabbed back, then sighed dramatically as he gave up and put his book back onto the nightstand. “Guess that’s Bumblebee’s way of pleading for lights out.”

“It is.” _Will you still make me regret something, Charles? Like you suggested this morning?_ Erik mind-whispered lewdly as he leaned down to kiss Charles’ eyelids closed, then snapped his fingers to turn off the bedside lamp and pull the curtains.

 _Not in front of the child,_ Charles chided, smiling into the darkness of their room and reaching for Erik’s hand when he felt his lover settled in under the blankets.

“Oh, but what has Bumblebee gotten me into,” Erik murmured, drowsiness overcoming him, making his words slur.

Charles couldn’t help a chuckle slipping past his lips, he really couldn’t. _It’s you who’s gotten himself into this, dearest._

But it was too late, he found as he curled up his psyche around Erik’s, who had turned soft and pliable with sleep already.

On his Adam’s apple, Bumblebee gave a small purr.

“Oh, what have _I_ gotten myself into?” Charles addressed it one last time, before the soft tendrils of sleep reached unfurled around him and pulled him under, too.


	8. All The Good Things There Are

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 8 - Birth 
> 
> A mutantphobic bigot makes an appearance on TV, and afterwards, Charles does his best to take Erik's mind off Senator Kelly's bullshit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quite a divergence from the prompt, but I forgot to let someone get pregnant before this xD enjoy!

“ _Their numbers ever-increasing amongst the world population, you might have met some of these special beings already, in the streets, at work, even in the circle of your friends. However, few of us have had access to further information about them. So behold, for we are witnessing not only the birth of a new era, but that of a new people: mutants, the children of Homo sapiens.”_

The grainy image of a crowded street flickered over the screen, somewhere that looked like New York or one of the other US American megacities, with the camera suddenly zooming in on a woman with snake scales instead of normal skin walking in the midst of all the other passers-by. The narrator kept on talking about mutants and their wondrous abilities, and then, just as the one on screen looked up to meet the lens with eyes which’s pupils were thin and vertical like those of a cat, the recording blipped out and the television cut to a studio with three people and one moderator in leather armchairs instead, while the audio commentary dimmed to a whisper in the background.

“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,” Ms Winther from On Trial Tonight chirped and turned to smile into the camera. “This was a taste of mutant sympathizer Gabrielle Haller’s documentary _The Future Among Us_ , which was first released exactly fifty years ago! So, for this special anniversary, we have invited two special guests to participate in tonight’s debate about mutant rights and their evolution over the past few decades: Senator Robert Kelly, former supporter of the Mutant Registration Act-” Quickly, the television showed a man in his fifties, with thinned-out hair and a mouth twisted downwards in a grimace of ever-lasting discontentment- “which didn’t pass the American people’s vote, and Doctor Moira MacTaggert, researcher in the area of genetics specialised in mutation.” The third person in the spotlight, a brunette with some light crow’s feet wrinkles around her friendly eyes, gave a confident smile. “Welcome!”

Applause descended from the invisible audience in the studio as On Trial Tonight’s trademark theme played and the camera zoomed out to show the moderator and her guests united on one screen.

Without taking his eyes from the Common Room’s television, Charles reached to his left on the sofa, grabbed Bumblebee and lifted her over onto his lap so he could try and untangle Erik’s knitting yarn from her claws. By his side, Anya gave a quiet giggle and whispered, “I’ll tell Paps to not always leave his stuff lying around when he’s not over. And Bee says sorry.”

“Thank you. Tell her her apologies have been accepted graciously,” Charles murmured and sent a wave of warmth both to Erik’s daughter’s ( _their daughters_ ) mind and to the more muddled one of the cat. Promptly, Bumblebee began to purr and twist so she could lick his fingers, and he retaliated by carding his fingers through her fur that had grown lush and shiny over the last two weeks.

On television, Ms Winther was just taking the opinion of her guests, like a referee at a boxing match evaluating his fighters’ advantages and weaknesses. “So, Doctor MacTaggert, you have been in close cooperation with universities all over the globe researching the mutant gene and its diverse implications for humanity.”

“Aye, indeed,” came the Scottish-tinged answer accompanied again by that wide smile.

Eyes flickering down to her notes, Ms Winther continued, “And none of your fellow scientists have found any evidence that the presence of _Homo superior_ is in any way harmful to _Homo sapiens_?”

“None at all. In fact, it has been found it that ever since the first notable increase in the percentage ay the mutant population, an increase in the quality of life ay the baselines has bin’ takin’ place as well!”

“Oh but this is nothing but leftist propaganda again!” Senator Kelly suddenly cut in, leaning forward in his seat with his hands clenched into fists in front of him. “There is no way these findings are scientifically sound! And if the statistics haven’t been manipulated, economic growth and such haven’t been allowed for! It is just impossible that mutants are anything but a threat to not only national, but international security, too!”

With that, he threw up his hands and leaned back into his chair, a pout not dissimilar to that of an unsatisfied child playing around his lips.

From across the room, Charles could feel Raven’s worry for the students milling about and giving the screen the occasional glance, and when he looked up, she had already set little Anna Marie down onto Irene’s lap and was speed-walking over. “Give me that,” she hissed at Scott who had been so immersed in holding hands with Jean and Logan that he hadn’t noticed he was sitting on the TV remote.

Just as Moira MacTaggert was starting on a reply, the channel changed to a nature documentary about what Charles made out to be big whites. He sighed. “I was watching that.”

“Go watch it in your room, then, or on your tablet, but not _here_ in front of the children,” Raven told him with a tone that said No-Talking-Back-Or-Else, then returned to her game of Bumpety Bump Rider with Anna Marie (Charles had been quite delighted when he had found out that Erik had been going around and teaching every adult in the School who would listen the nursery rhyme both in English and German, together with the corresponding actions).

Anya wasn’t giggling anymore. “You know, if Paps had been here, the TV wouldn’t be working at all anymore. He always tells us about those mutantphobic assholes he has to meet for work-” There, she stopped, and it was clear to Charles that she had already told him more than she was allowed to.

“ _Work_ , huh?” he replied.

“I’m sorry,” came the mumbled answer, and when he looked over, Anya had lowered her phone as well as her eyes, biting her lip guiltily (at that moment, she truly looked like her father, Charles noted and concluded that the apple did indeed never fall far from the tree).

With Bumblebee still purring beneath his hands, Charles shook his head. “ _I_ am sorry, and I’m not mad at you. I have no right to take out my frustration on you when it really is _your father_ who won’t tell me about his work, because he thinks it could ‘endanger you and everyone you love’.” The last part he spoke without real venom in his words. He had been over that argument with Erik far too many times, and was growing tired of the never-ending reruns.

Purring so loudly she could have made a small engine jealous, Bumblebee sprang up and over onto Anya’s lap, where she promptly settled down to polish her fur with her rough tongue. The girl smiled and looked back up at Charles. “Thanks Dad.”

“Nothing to thank me for, my dear.” He gave a shrug and smiled back. “Quite unlike Senator Kelly, I’m just practising what I think is decent human behaviour.”

That night, he stayed on the phone with Erik for a very long time, exchanging first the usual pleasantries and flirtations, then moving on to the subject of On Trial Tonight.

“I can’t believe they aired this episode,” Erik was ranting on, “or even invited Kelly in the first place! Who in their goddamn mind did think it would be a good idea-?”

“Erik, my love,” Charles said and yawned. “I know. I know, I’ve heard it all before from Raven, and then Emma, and _then_ Alex. Can I maybe entertain you with another challenge?”

“And what would that challenge be?” Erik’s voice came through the receiver, gruff and slightly hoarse, as if he had been talking all day long. Charles thought about advising him to go drink a glass of water, then refrained. He didn’t want to sound too patronising.

“I want you to do something for me, yes? Just for once, I want you to stop thinking about all the bad things the world has to offer, and start thinking about all the good things there are!”

A huff on the other side of the line. “Do those things even exist outside your imagination?”

“They do.” Charles nodded, even though he knew Erik couldn’t see it. Suddenly, he missed the way Erik’s mind felt to his touch, a coordinated chaos tinged with swirls of silver and gold (oh, he could just stop kidding himself: _Anytime_ Erik was out of his telepathy’s reach, Charles missed him dearly). “I won’t tell you the most wonderful one just yet, but let me start: _The Future Among Us_ by Gabrielle Haller, a documentary entirely in favour of the mutant community which is still up-to-date in our modern world. You continue.”

“Er.” The rustle of bedsheets, then the click of the lamp on Erik’s nightstand. “My children, all four of them. Even though I still can’t believe Wanda did so badly in that maths exam.”

Charles chuckled. “Fair enough. Okay, alright… our School, and the shelter it provides to our kind.”

“My Mama’s Latkes.”

“Seriously? Bring some over when you get the opportunity. I continue: Bumblebee, and all the other strays on the grounds.”

“Uh, Ororo’s Garden.”

“Oh, good one! The Hebrew lullaby you always sing to our kids, even though Anya claims she’s too old for it.”

“Never too old for _L’hitroat_. Your wonderfully floppy hair.”

“Your gorgeous storm eyes.”

“The two dimples when you smile.”

“Your ridiculously narrow waist.”

And then, both at the same time, as if they were two souls in one body, “ _You._ ”

For a few seconds after that, there was silence on the line between them, only broken by the bursts of their breathing.

“We could go on forever like this,” Charles spoke up, cheeks hurting from how hard he was smiling.

Erik sounded just as exhilarated when he answered, “Because of you I’ve got three more crow’s feet around my eyes now. And I don’t even mind.”

At that, Charles laughed, couldn’t help the happy shudder that ran through him head to hip (and toe, he supposed, but he couldn’t be sure for obvious reasons). “Good! So, there are _so many_ good things in this world, do you see now, love?”

“Yes.” And as Erik spoke this time, low and probably all close to his speaker and with a _joy_ Charles could feel without touching his mind, it felt as if he was laying right beside Charles. “I see, _Liebling_.”


	9. Home (Is Where I'm In Love With You)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 9 - Warmth 
> 
> Ororo's anger leads to a heavy Northern Downpour, which in turn leads to quite a many other things, such as Erik wearing Charles' clothes, Bobby and John learning to knit in front of the fireplace and finally, home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The temptation to just name this chapter Northern Downpour was soooooooooooooooooooo big *Brendon Urie squawks in the distance*  
> 

The heavy rainfall had caught Erik completely unawares on the highway.

At first, the light drizzle hadn’t seemed to pose too much of a problem. Yes, it _had been_ the evening rush hour and also Friday evening on one of the busiest arterial roads leading away from New York City. But what were some meagre drops of water when you could barely see the concrete from the enormous mass of cars?

Well, at least that was what Erik had thought. Then, the sky had opened up to pour bucket after bucket from its gates, and the madness had truly begun.

The wind and rain had battered against his windshield so consitently that only vague shapes had been recognisable in the circle of his headlights, and under the force of the assault, Erik had been able to feel the roof’s metal strain. Around him, the metal frames of all the other vehicles had slowly fallen away, the drivers probably deciding to pull over and sit the worst of the weather out, until he had been coasting along in absolute solitude.

He was beyond relieved when his exit arrived and he could slow down to a crawl, getting a better grip on the chrome and steel of his vehicle before speeding up again and getting it over with the last few miles. Except for him, he could feel not another living soul out and about, and he guessed it was because no one was actually as crazy as to go out and risk a spectacular crash.

Then again, he had a good reason to be crazy. Crazy about one certain person, to be exact, who was totally worth some bloodshed.

Then, the gates of the School rolled into view, and he exhaled shakily as he waved it open and passed through onto the driveway which rather resembled a raging current of yellowed muddy water than what it was supposed to be. From the trees flanking the road, twigs and leaves had been broken, and there was not a blade of grass still standing upright.

The downpour hadn’t abated even one bit when he pulled into the mansion’s deserted courtyard. For a minute or two, he just sat in the car, engine turned off, hands on the steering wheel, and listened to the never-ending pitter-patter of raindrops on the windowpanes. Finally, with a groan which would have made Charles look at him like he feared Erik was about to drop dead then and there, he grabbed the bag with his change of clothes and the latkes his Mama had arranged for him only the day before, pulled his Belfast tighter around his shoulders and throat, then decided not to risk the life of his favourite fedora and left the steel-grey hat in the car.

He was already soaked before he had even closed his car door properly.

The rain plastered his hair against his skull, stung his cheeks, slipped into his collar and down his back. Grimacing at the sudden dampness, he hurried through puddles, ignoring the way his shoes immediately filled with freezing water, and only stopped when he had reached the relative shelter of the doorway.

The door was pulled open before he had a chance to grasp for the handle with his metalsense, and he found himself face to face with a very sour-looking Emma Frost.

“Well well, look at what the cat dragged in,” she drawled, grabbed him by the collar to pull him inside and slammed the heavy oak door shut after him. “Sugar, you look awful. Go look for your darling boy, will you? He should be in the mood to coddle you.” And with those words, she left him standing rather befuddled in the entrance hall, in a steadily growing puddle. Her heels sounded like gunshots on the parquet as she marched away and Erik swallowed down his pride so he didn’t shout after her like some guy whose fragile masculinity had just received a few blows. She had probably just had a bad day.

“Jeez, Erik!” came Jean’s voice from behind him. “What happened to you?”

Just so managing a smile, he turned and shrugged when he saw that she had raised her hands in front of her mouth, eyes wide in shock. “Have you _looked_ _outside_? The rain. The _rain_ happened to me.”

“Oh Ororo...” she mumbled, then came over to take his soaking coat and scarf. “I’m calling Dad right now, so he knows what’s going on. Aren’t you cold?”

“Now that you say it, yes,” Erik grumbled, feeling the chill of being wet all over seep into his bones.

“Oh geez oh geez… if you get sick, the Prof is going to kill us.” Quite unceremoniously, Jean grabbed Erik by the upper arm and steered him towards the stairs, ignoring his small “Wait, what?” in response to her last words. “He’s told me to bring you up to his room, so you can shower and change. He’ll be there in a few minutes.”

And so they went, earning quite a few confused glances and “Hello, Mr Lehnsherr!”s from various students they came across in the ground floor’s halls, until they reached the teachers’ wing and were finally left alone. With a lopsided wave of her hand, Jean unlocked the door to Charles’ quarters and shoved Erik inside. “I’m so sorry, really! If your clothes in the bag have gotten wet, just take some from Dad’s drawers. I really have to go now though, I have… _business_ to attend to.”

“Wait-” And that was about all Erik got to say before the door slammed closed, Jean’s belt buckle and necklace rapidly moving down the corridor in sync with her fading footsteps.

Erik braced himself with a fist over his head against the door, then knocked his forehead against the dark rich wood, since he was already on it. “Na, verdammt.”

“And you’re sure you’re quite warm again?”

“Charles, I’m _hot_.”

“Yes you are.”

“No, Charles,” Erik sighed and craned his neck so he could meet his partner’s eyes from his seat on the floor. “I meant I’m more than _quite warm again_. Like, close to sweating.”

“Oh. In that case-” His eyes crinkling sweetly in the corners, Charles reached out and gently tugged at Erik’s hair, massaging his scalp like you would rub a cat between the ears- “my goal’s accomplished, I suppose.”

Erik didn’t deem this worthy of a verbal answer, so instead, he just knocked his head against one of Charles’ legs and hummed approvingly. The hem of Charles’ woolly cardigan far too large on his frame but with sleeves inches shorter than those of Erik’s turtle-necks rode up at that, but he pulled it back down again. He had found out he liked wearing Charles’ clothes (even though he was glad his spare pair of jeans had been only slightly damp, because if Charles’ sleeves were already too short, his trousers would be so even more).

After that, they sat in silence, pursuing their respective means of relaxing after a long day: Erik was knitting (a blue-and-grey scarf for Charles, because he just _knew_ it would make his telepath’s eyes stand out even more remarkably), Charles was reading Doctor Moira MacTaggert’s work on mutant genetics and occasionally looking up and just listening to everyone’s thoughts flitting around in the Common Room, their little joys and sorrows blending together in the cosiest feeling of the warmth of home.

Erik knew that because Charles’ mind was comfortably wrapped around his own, in a constant exchange of what they saw, felt, experienced. It was quite a neat little trick, really.

 _Thank you for that_ , came his lover’s voice with a tinge of sarcasm, _really, I am flattered._

Grunting, Erik focused back on his metal needles which were floating in midair, between him and the flickering fireplace, weaving yarn into a gift which was meant to be a surprise for Charles but wasn’t so much now. _Mindreaders_.

“Mr Lehnsherr sir,” a voice suddenly piped up at his side, and he almost stabbed its source with his knitting gear.

Lucky for him, he had not only good reflexes, but also a good sense of self-preservation ( _You’re right about that_ , Charles whispered, _don’t go around stabbing my students to death, will you?_ ). Little Bobby, holding in his hand the one of little John, had just dodged a bullet.

“Yes, how can I help you?” Erik asked.

“Can you teach us how to knit?” John, this time, excitement tingeing his voice with the taste of flames ( _that_ was Charles’ thought, obviously, not Erik’s).

Bobby nodded enthusiastically. “He wants to make me a blanket, so I don’t always feel cold inside, and I’m gonna make him gloves so he can touch me even when I’m ice!”

This time, a smile came easily. “Be my guests. We probably shouldn’t start with your main project just yet, just small pieces so you can practise a little-” A flick of Erik’s fingers summoned two more pairs of knitting needles from his basket- “but you can already have a think about the colours, boys.”

“Red and orange and yellow like this!” John announced and reached into the fireplace to pick up a little fire, which promptly flared up to lick at his fingers like an excited pup.

“White an’ grey an’ blue, that way we always carry something of one another around,” Bobby stated more calmly.

Erik felt his smile widen. If those two weren’t made for each other from the very start. “Alright. _Good_. Let’s start with the basics first then: hold your needles like _this_.”

About five failed attempts and one successful try later, Bobby looked up and towards the big constellation of couches in the very middle of the room, gathered around the TV. Ororo was lounging on one of them, head in Jean’s lap with a cold cloth on her forehead while getting a foot massage from Logan.

“Why’s Miss Munroe been so sick today?” he whispered and looked back at Erik.

Before he could answer, Charles spoke in his stead, “She hasn’t been sick. She’s just... a bit upset. She also caused that torrent Erik got into, but he doesn’t mind all that much. Nobody’s been hurt after all.”

 _Just a bit drenched, which led to you calling me a drowned rat_ , Erik groused without real venom behind his thoughts.

Charles’ guilt though was real as he sent back, _I’m sorry, darling, I really am. But I can totally understand her for wanting to wash away that graffiti on the gym’s wall, she just overreacted a little bit._

‘ _Mutie scum.’ ‘Abominations that shouldn’t even have been born.’ That’s what they call us. They don’t have the faintest idea_.

 _Oh no, they don’t_ , was the last thing Charles consciously thought at him before focusing back on the two boys sitting cross-legged in front of Erik. “I see you two have already made big progress. Good job, but I think it would be better you continued tomorrow. We don’t want to be up after bedtime, do we?”

Grumbling, the two picked up their things at that and bid the both of them a slightly less accusing farewell, before ambling out of the room, holding their hands in front of their mouths to hide their little yawns.

“Sometimes I wish I could live here all week round,” Erik said when Bobby and John were out of sight and the Common Room was slowly beginning to empty of the remaining students as well.

Charles’ hand was back in his hair faster than you could say _Not in front of the children._ A pleasant shiver of anticipation ran down Erik’s spine as he couldn’t help thinking about how they could maybe work with this in the bedroom later that evening.

_You know, we’ve only known each other for what, two, three months? But I trust you with my life and that of the School already. It’s safe to say you’re more than welcome to move in._

“Why, yes...” Erik mumbled, pondering over a few rough calculations. _I could make the commute. One hour to_ ~~ _work_~~ _New York City and one hour back, with the car, should be doable on a daily basis._

 _Ah yes, your mysterious work you still won’t tell me about._ And out loud, Charles said, “Oh, Anya will be so embarrassed to have to see us smooching daily in the halls instead of only on the weekends.”

“Let her be embarrassed,” Erik murmured as he got up to climb Charles lap. “And I won’t say anything when she brings home her first girlfriend, I’ll even behave.”

 _Oh sure you will_ , was the last thing he heard from Charles before he leaned in to claim his wonderful telepath’s lips and they both drowned in a haze of _home-safe-loveyou-warmth._


	10. Husband & Husband

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 10 - Bouquet 
> 
> When Darwin and Alex finally get married and toss the bouquet, what had to happen does indeed happen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alemando forever *peace sign* <3<3<3

“And that said, I now pronounce you husband and husband! You may now kiss,” Ororo’s voice rang out over the rows of assembled guests, to be heard for miles and miles around on that beautiful cloudless spring Sunday.

Just as Darwin had expected from the Xavier School, their priestess’ words were promptly followed by an onslaught of applause, people cheering and then, as he leaned in towards Alex, lewd whistles and choked-up coos and awws. They kissed, the sun warm on their eyelids, and when they separated, a shower of golden sparks and dark red rose petals which vanished into nothing when they touched the ground enveloped them and all the guests (courtesy of Jas’ illusionist skills, Darwin noticed after a glance to the left of the improvised platform where the teenage girl had taken place and was now smiling to herself, eyes screwed shut like a cat that had got the cream).

Alex’s hand in his – where it truly belonged -, Darwin took the few steps down to the path between the rows of seats they had put up on lawn just a few hours ago, on the break of dawn, and smiled for Jubilee behind the camera, taking shot after shot of the newest married couple in Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters.

At his side, Alex radiated the heat of a small sun, shouting thanks to Ororo and his baby brother and everyone, waving, almost skipping with elation. And when Darwin looked over to admire just how resplendent his husband looked in his white suit with the wine-red tie and the stem of the roses-and-daffodils bridal bouquet grabbed tightly in his hands, Alex grinned and grabbed him by the jaw to kiss him and kiss him and kiss him, over and over again-

“Get a room, boys!” shouted Raven from a few rows over, to which Alex responded no less audibly, “You’re one to talk, you and Irene are just the same!”

“I knew that would come,” came a resigned mumble from Irene, followed by an undignified squeal as Raven leaned into her, cried out an overexcited “Surprise!” and began tickling her into submission.

They had barely reached the end of the aisle when Erik Lehnsherr appeared before them, offering both a firm handshake and a clap on the back. “Congrats, meine Herren. May your married life prove to be as much of a success as this School.”

Next came the Prof, with tears in his eyes he had barely wiped away before they leaned down to hug him simultaneously. “Thank you for bringing such joy and life to our School, you two. Without your help, it wouldn’t even be standing anymore.”

“Is that a side stab to that one time I set Hank’s lab on fire?” Alex whispered from the corner of his mouth only seconds after the Prof had wheeled out of hearing range. Darwin, however, never got a chance to answer, because suddenly, Scott was bro-hugging first Alex, then him, closely followed by Jean pecking both their cheeks, and then it seemed as if the whole school had decided to congratulate them and was for them with tears of joy, huge smiles and all the well-wishes.

Fifteen minutes later, Jubilee shooed away the last bystanders. “Time for the group photographs. But first, you throw the bouquet!”

Despite their groaning and moaning (they had just got _married_ and would have preferred to relax now, thank you very much), she dragged them over to where the rest of the wedding party had assembled on the courtyard, chatting away as they nursed their glasses of champagne and orange juice. However, everyone fell silent when Darwin and Alex positioned themselves with their backs to them, each a hand on the bridal (groomal?) bouquet and hearts beating fast in anticipation.

This was the last string separating them from single life. They knew as much.

“Are you ready for this?” Alex murmured, catching Darwin’s eyes with those icy blue ones of his.

Smiling and with a feeling like falling in the pit of his stomach, Darwin replied, “Whenever you are, hot shot.”

They moved in unison after that, no communication but a furtive glance and the twitch of a hand necessary to set them off. In a wide arc, the bouquet flew across the wide sky, the red and gold of it transforming it into an exotic bird soaring under the heavy blue, just for the blink of an eye.

When Alex lost his balance from the force of their throw and stumbled backwards, giggling uncontrollably, Darwin was there and closed his arms around his husband’s ( _husband’s_!) chest from behind, rocking them forwards and backwards, dusting butterfly kisses along his shoulders and jawline.

Behind them, their guests were yelling, their feet crunching on the gravel as they jumped and reached up for the flower arrangement like it was a lucky charm.

Then, out of the blue, a voice Darwin recognized as the one of the Prof drowned out all others. “Watch out!”

Alex swirled them around in alarm, only for them to come face-to-face with a rather befuddled Mr Lehnsherr holding the bridal bouquet with outstretched arms in front of his chest like it was a dead rat he had found in a kitchen cabinet. Eyes wide, almost panicked, he made quite the comical image. To their left, Darwin could hear the frantic clicking of Jubilee’s trigger in the absolute silence of the grounds (save for the occasional bird chirping away of course, but what did they know about dramatic silences?).

Having had to do quite a lot with talkative teens over the course of his work, Darwin could only think of the memeability of the end result. Damn you, brain.

“Well,” Raven’s chipper tone broke the silence, “guess we’ll have to fix a date soon.”

“Uh,” was Mr Lehnsherr’s incredibly intelligible reply. Finally, the Prof – who had had to shake himself out of a stupor himself – came to his rescue.

“Erik, darling, you just acquired the first item of home décor we’ll put up when you move in with me.”

“The next thing you know one of them’ll drop on one knee and propose right here and now,” Angel whisper-yelled from somewhere in the staring crowd.

“No! No, don’t give them the idea or they’ll really do it right now!” Anya came barrelling through, and then all hell broke loose as Charles calmly stated in everybody’s mind, _Of course, no such thing will happen today, we’d hate to ruin our boys’ big day_ , and no one listened to him.

“Sorry, boys, but your wedding-” Logan, with a small wink, took his unlit cigar out of the corner of his mouth for the next words- “is _all_ water under the bridge now.”

“If you like it then you shoulda put a ring on it!” Alex joined into the general chaos of voices, hooking his arm under Darwin’s to drag him along with the guests starting to flock towards the sport’s court where a buffet had been assembled in the early hours of the morning, under the loving care of one certain Mr Lehnsherr who had been coaxed into teaching Cooking And Household Classes when he would move in, courtesy to the Prof, of course (and _damn_ was he right, Darwin was still regretting all the years he had gone without knowledge of traditionally Jewish sweets).

Mr Lehnsherr came round to them in an interval between the best men/women’s speeches, the bouquet nowhere in sight – safely stowed away in the Prof’s room already, Darwin supposed from what he knew about the order-preferring nature of the metalbender – but replaced with a giant carving knife, its handle woven with intricate reliefs of flower buds and rosewood stems. “For the wedding cake,” Mr Lehnsherr said and carefully, almost solemnly, handed it to Darwin who took it with fingers hardening to rock and just _had_ to admire its impressive weight and sharpness of its blade. “Keep it, consider it a wedding gift. And sorry for that scene before. We really didn’t mean to steal the show,” all said with a guilty smile.

“No biggie,” Alex pre-empted Darwin. “And if you need help with _your_ wedding, well-” For a fraction of a second, he smiled at Darwin, held his gaze like he was the only thing in existence across the whole universe- “just ask us, we got the know-how.”

Mr Lehnsherr gave a dry chuckle. “Thank you very much. I’ll be sure to take you up on that when the day comes, even though I suppose it’ll still be a while.”

“Don’t you be so sure of that,” the Prof’s voice came from the side, and as soon as he was in arm’s reach, he pulled Lehnsherr down to sit on his wheelchair’s armrest, his hand comfortably slung over the man’s hips. “I already ordered the rings.”

“Liar. You would never spoil a surprise.” A soft trait that was only ever there when he spoke with his partner or his children took over Mr Lehnsherr’s traits.

“Let’s bail, we’re only disturbing the scenery here,” Alex whispered into Darwin’s ear. “An’ we still got a wedding cake to cut, y’know?

Already being pulled over towards the buffet, Darwin protested feebly, “But we’re supposed to wait for the others-”

“When have we ever cared about rules,” Alex asked him without asking, then pulled him into a kiss so sweet and sinful that Darwin found he did indeed not have any counter-arguments, and that together, they could now do whatever they set their minds to. 


	11. Edie, or: A Kind Of Magic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 11 - Young 
> 
> Erik and Charles visit Edie Lehnsherr in her home. Of course, the doting mother that she is, nothing can stop her from adopting Charles straight-away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Edie is alive and kicking! Yay! Enjoy!

“Oh, but young man, a third serving won’t hurt! Look at you, you’re still far too thin!”

“Mama-”

“No, no, Erik, it’s alright. Really, your mother’s cooking is extraordinary. It’s safe to say you got it from her!” Smiling up at Edie, Charles patted Erik’s hand beside him, then offered his plate for another scoop of latkes. “Also, I have to dig in _now_ , since you don’t ever bring any with you...”

“Erik!” came a gasp from Edie, her pepper hair trembling on top of her head where she had pulled it back into a bun, her delicate traits twisted in a mockery of shock. “You could have _asked_ me! For this polite young gentleman, I would cook for the whole School!”

At that, Charles felt his smile grow a bit lopsided and he stuttered, “Uh, ma’am, I’m not sure-”

“She would do it, she really would,” Erik stated calmly, “ _especially_ if you tell her now that she can’t do it, nicht wahr, Mama?”

“Sehr war, mein Schatz,” Edie replied, eyes going all fond and soft as she looked at her son from over her neat tiny living room table in her even neater, if a bit more spacious, cottage in the very rural suburbs of Big Apple. In his chest, and just for a split second, there was a pinprick pain to Charles’ heart as he thought that Edie was the mother he had never had, and the mother his Erik so deserved.

 _What are you thinking about that’s got your eyes going all sad? Don’t be, you never should when you’re with my mother_ , Erik thought at him, gripping his hand under the table in what Charles knew was his way of letting him know they were here, together, never far apart.

 _She’s lovely._ Charles watched Edie’s retreating back, traced her sunshine thoughts into the kitchen where she put the pan back on the stove to preserve some warmth, just in case her son and his dearest indeed called for an additional serving again. _I just thought about my own mother briefly, and it was a mistake. Won’t happen again._

 _Don’t ever feel sorry for feeling bad_ , came Erik’s prompt reply, and then his lips on Charles’ knuckles, their touch just as warm and butterfly-wings soft as Edie’s thoughts.

“I see you’ve already moved on to dessert.” The elderly woman’s voice made them jerk apart, and she laughed at the sight, stood in the doorway with her hands on her hips in a caricature of a mother scolding. “Oh, don’t worry, my dears! But I’d really you didn’t miss my rugelach, Erik, I _know_ you never take the time to make them.”

“Y _ou know how to make-_ Oh Erik, you selfish man!” Mocking offence, Charles dropped Erik’s hand and applied himself to diminishing the latkes on his plate.

At his side, Erik grumbled, “It takes time I don’t have, okay?”

“Erik, mein Sohn,” Edie sniffed and took a sip of her water, “you should know to do _anything_ for your loved ones, even if it costs you one leg _and_ a kidney.”

Mouth full of potato deliciousness, Charles couldn’t help a snicker, and when Erik rolled his eyes and said, “You two really are made for each other, aren’t you?” with no real bite to his words, Edie’s laugh rang out brightly through the living room like the clear and joyous warble of a delicate songbird.

Later, after they had moved on to the rugelach, coffee (for Erik) and tea (for Edie and Charles) and had settled on the living room couch where they had an excellent view onto Edie’s well-kept miniature backgarden bathing in the sun, Edie suddenly got up and went over to an antique-looking drawer.

“Oh no, Mama, _no_ ,” Erik groaned from where he had his head nestled onto Charles’ shoulder, “please spare us, _I beg you_.”

Deaf to her son’s whining, Edie took what looked like a very big, very full cardboard folder out of one of the compartments, which’s label Charles could only decipher as “Fotoalbum: Erik 0 – 12” when she came to sit at Charles’ free side and opened the cover with a solemn flourish. “Now, since you’ve been telling me so much about your kids, I thought it would only be fair to show you some of mine. Erik’s got a lovely sister, of course - Ruth, mein kleiner Sonnenstrahl - and we’ve got lots and lots of pictures of her, but I think you’ll be more interested in this.”

 _This_ seemed to be page after page of various stages of Erik’s childhood: Erik as a baby, naked, staring into the camera with eyes widened in astonishment, as if being born had come as a total surprise to him (which, thinking about it, it probably did to everyone); Erik on his first day of school, in a neatly pressed uniform and with excitement dusting his cheeks a lovely shade of apple red; Erik on what looked like a warm summer’s day, lying in the grass reading a book and twirling metal into intricate shapes over his head, oblivious to the camera and all the other going-ons around him. At the back of his head, Charles felt Erik cringe, but he couldn’t care less. “Oh, Edie, you’ve got _photographs_? Erik’s told me everything imaginable about yourself and Ruth and your husband, of course, but _this_ -” Those weren’t tears stinging in his eyes, were they? “Never thought I would actually get to see this. We never- My family-”

“Oh, my dear boy,” Edie murmured soothingly, and suddenly there were arms that weren’t Erik’s pulling Charles into a soft embrace, a hand patting his hair, the quiet humming of a mother’s voice. “You have never had real photo albums, have you? Or a good childhood to begin with. And dear, you don’t have to answer that, if you don’t feel like it.”

Quietly, Charles let the tears fall and breathed in Edie’s perfume of clean clothes and camomile tea, his chin on her bony shoulder, Erik’s hand sliding rhythmically up and down his back. There were tiny dust motes dancing in the sun rays falling in through the closed window, he noticed.

“You’re almost as much of a mind reader as him, Mama,” Erik’s voice came from somewhere over his right shoulder.

Charles felt Edie gently begin to rock him back and forth, and he watched with a tinge of guilt as his tears seeped into the fabric of her eggshell-beige cardigan, his throat all closed up and hurting. “Any good mother should be,” she replied to Erik, and then, Charles really couldn’t stop his fingers from digging into her sides where he had closed his arms around her, and the sobs started wracking his body and wouldn’t subside.

Erik’s murmurs of sweet nothings in his mind and Edie’s cooing and soothing voice carried him through the next minutes, until he had somewhat calmed down and his eyes were red and swollen, but no longer wet. Quite at the beginning of his breakdown, Erik had got up and gone in search of paper handkerchiefs for him, handing them to him with a little peck on the forehead, like Charles’ ugly-crying with his lips all screwed-up and facial traits dissolving into selfish hurt didn’t bother him at all.

 _Why would I ever be bothered by you?_ His eyes soft, Erik took him from the arms of his mother and into his own instead. _No one ever looks good when crying with true feeling, that’s just a lie Hollywood wants us to believe._

Charles was currently blowing his nose and pressing his forehead under his lover’s chin, but in their conjoined space of consciousness, he snorted. _Aren’t you supposed to tell me I’ll look beautiful to you no matter what?_

 _Then I would be lying, too._ Erik was grinning with all his teeth on display again, Charles could feel it. _And trust is here to be held upright in a relationship, isn’t it?_

Months-old bitterness reared its head at the back of Charles’ mind then, but before he could get to talk about the subject of _trust in a relationship_ and it subsequently involving trusting your partner with any information about yourself, _including_ your Work, Edie was leaning down to him with a cup of apple tea perched on a fine saucer in her hands. “Here, my dear boy, against the dehydration. How do you feel? If you have a headache, there’s aspirin in the bathroom, over the sink, and if you feel like being alone for a little while now...” She trailed off, the crow’s feet around her eyes deepening in an honest display of compassion.

“I’m quite fine, thank you, Edie, really, _thank you_ ,” he answered, the words grating a bit at his throat. “I… There are no words for how lovely a woman you are.”

“Oh, mein Schatz, you just think that because I’m old and have lived so much life already that I know how to be my loveliest self. But you, you are still young, and have so much to learn, but being lovely comes to you naturally. Erik really ought to hold on to you, I haven’t seen him smile that much since he was last happy with Magda.” With that and a smile on top, Erik’s mother straightened up and set to gathering the used cutlery and dishes before disappearing into the kitchen, humming a foreign melody under her breath.

All the while, Charles was watching her (he would have liked to offer his help, but Erik had whispered in his head, _Forget it, she’ll tear you to pieces sweetly if you try to help her now_ , and well, what better piece of advice was there than the one of a loving son?), and when she was out of hearing distance, he leaned up to kiss Erik once, taking his time, and then whispered, “She’s a kind of magic.”

Erik just smiled and whispered, “Yes, she is a force of nature indeed,” before leaning in and kissing him deeper.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Charles started crying out of nowhere and I can't even be blamed for it because I didn't see it coming either *waves hands at story* This thing is a perpetuum mobile, I'm just... Idek, I'm just Jon Snow rn.


	12. End of Spring and Beginning of Something New

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 12 - Gathering 
> 
> Christian Frost pretty much annihilates Erik's plans of keeping his Work a continuous secret.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No, I did not expect this to play out like this either. Also, don't murder me for Christian's characterisation, literally all I know about him is based on the current Marauders instalment and his Fandom Wiki page (:

Spring was coming to an end.

The mansion’s flourishing grounds lay resplendent in the rose glow of dusk, with swarms of insects slowly sinking to the ground in thick swarms and the trees whispering with their new coat of deep, rich green. Under Erik’s bare soles, the earth was warm and firm. At his side, Charles was dressed in loose, informal attire and smiling, chit-chatting with the occasional parent who was visiting their information evening about the coming school year. Some Erik knew, some he didn’t. Apparently, a whole bunch of students would arrive once summer break was over.

When finally no concerned father or inquisitive mother was mobbing Charles, Erik went to fetch them a drink, passing by Bobby who was playing shadow games by the roaring fireplace John had let flare up from nothing but a few dry twigs and his pocket lighter. No words were needed when he held his and Charles’ glasses of sparkling wine (alcohol-free) out to the kid, who grinned and splayed his fingers so a slight sheen of ice crawled over the flutes’ walls, cooling their content.

“Thank you,” Erik murmured, grinning back. “You’ll have your hands full once the height of summer comes.”

“I’ll defend him,” John declared, weaving a sword and shield from the flames in front of him with deft fingers. “He’ll have _absolutely nothing_ to fear!”

“Oh, I believe you.” That said, Erik ambled back over the grass to the pergola Jean and he had erected a few weeks ago just beside Ororo’s Garden, it’s dark wood and twirled iron overgrown already with the ivy and evergreen Lin had convinced to take root in the soil. Paper lanterns had been hung on its struts by student volunteers, illuminating the gathering below in their honeyed light.

When he came up behind Charles, Erik leaned down, lips brushing the shell of his lover’s ear, taking delight in the shiver it sent down both their spines. “I brought us something so we can drink to the fact that it’s been almost four months now since I pulled you from that muddy flower bed.”

“And what a lucky pull you had.” Satisfaction broadening his smile, Charles took the offered champagne flute. “Thank you, my dearest. However, I have to inform you that the ground has grown firm again, and it’ll be quite some time until I’ll require your help for a second time.”

“Oh, I’m patient.” Erik rounded his partner’s wheelchair and lowered himself onto his lap, gingerly so as to not displace the thin blanket still draped over it despite the t-shirt-and-khaki-pants temperature.

Almost as soon as he had settled in, Charles’ arm snaked around his hips to lock itself in place there, warm, firm, grounding. _I’m sure you are, my boy_ , came a whisper at the back of Erik’s head, followed closely by a tickling sensation that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. Charles had pulled him against his lips, was trailing small kisses down his spine, all so hidden from their guests that Erik didn’t dare show a reaction for fear of attracting bewildered stares.

 _Tease_ , he stated in their shared mindspace, and not as collectedly as he would have liked.

Amusement paired with _raw primal hunger_ curled possessively around his thoughts at the same time as the hand on his hips slid down onto his thigh, and then lower still. _I was about to tell you to wait until we had gone up, but since we might as well do it here just without people notic- Oh._

“What ‘ _Oh?_ ’, what is it, Charles?” Erik groaned, gasped almost- until there was a sensation like a bucket full of ice water being dropped over his crotch, and now he was gasping in earnest. “Charles, was zum-?”

“Christian! How nice to see you here!” _We weren’t just about to get down to business, nuh-uh, because_ this _is Emma’s brother, who she tried to set me up with one time but I really think she just wanted him to spy on me for blackmail._ Charles in his head didn’t sound particularly stressed, just very much afraid of serving Emma new reasons to throw him lewdly knowing glances in the middle of a teachers’ conference with everyone’s attention on them. “What brings you to our modest establishment?”

Erik, however, found he himself was feeling _very much afraid_.

Frost. Christian Frost.

It couldn’t be.

It had to be. He should have known from the very first time he had laid eyes upon Emma, the School’s counsellor, and found himself taken aback by the similarity of both the last name and the cold, all-seeing eyes.

Well, if he wasn’t fucked.

“Hello, Charles, how do you do it that you still look like twenty? Shame I didn’t land you back then, but apparently you got lucky with another- Hey. Hey! I know you!” Erik looked up, fingers so painfully cramped around the stem of his champagne glass he feared he might break it, and was met with the oh-so dreaded recognition in the steel-blue eyes of his vis-à-vis (ah yes, and the clothes hadn’t changed one bit either: high-end and petal-white, because of course, the Frosts did colour-coordinate). “Erik Lehnsherr!” Christian threw his hands up, a grin growing beneath his shock of blond hair. “The one and only! Fancy seeing you here, been a _looong_ time since I last had the honour.” This was followed by a quick wink at Charles, obviously intended to be playful, but just ending up lewd.

Erik did his best to veil the dread in the pit of his stomach from Charles, tried to dilute the sensation of the ground being pulled from his feet, he really did. And of course, failure was the only possible outcome.

“Christian, you know my-?” _Erik, what’s going on, dear, love, please tell me what I did wrong._

“Oh, I do.” This time, when Christian threw his hands up again – spilling champagne on a passing Katherine Pryde who only saved herself by phasing see-through a split second before the droplets hit -, it was more defensive than flirtatious. “From _work_ , of course, I swear I didn’t have my finger in _that_ pie at any time, because, y’know, I prefer the ones who don’t bite back.”

“Work. A-ha. Yes, of course.” Charles’ smile, too, had lost every trace of genuine joy. “So, what affair has led you here?”

“Guys.” Finally abandoning the hopeless cause of holding an almost empty champagne flute in one hand while gesturing excessively, Christian waved over one of the waitressing students and put his glass on their tray. “I would absolutely _love_ to talk about the lovely telepathic quintuplets I’m distantly related to and for which I’m checking out your School, but there’s obviously an issue going on here. Like, right here, right now.” Cue awkward finger-guns at Erik slowly getting up from Charles’ lap. “So, I’ll leave you to talk it out, and then maybe come back later, _if_ that snack on legs I see prancing around _over there_ won’t have me.”

And then, the hem of his suit jacket flaring out behind him in a flourish, Christian Frost was gone as quickly from their life as he had stumbled right into it.

Erik’s knees were turning to jelly. “I need to sit down,” he rasped out to no one in particular, then, before Charles could say anything, waved over an unoccupied lawn chair and slumped down onto it, the last strings holding him upright giving out just in time.

“Erik.” That was probably Charles, addressing him, but there was a buzzing and swooshing in his ears. _Erik. Tell me. Tell me now, please._

It had been quite a while since he had last felt like crying. Well, he would need to update that life fact about himself.

 _Erik. Erik, my dearest, whatever it is you have to tell me, I won’t be mad._ Then, Charles’ hands were taking the glass of champagne from his, deposing it safely on the stone floor a few inches to the left, linking their fingers again.

“I’m- I’m not a prostitute or anything, if you’re thinking that.” Despite his throat feeling drier than that wine Charles liked to order from a special retailer, Erik pressed out a chuckle. “I just-”

Charles’ hands squeezed his, still warm, still firm, still grounding. Trusting. _Show me, if you can’t tell me._

_But you meant for this place, this School, to be a safe haven to all mutants. My very presence is already endangering._

_Then an additional piece of information won’t do any more harm._

Breath stuttering, Erik pressed his lips to Charles’ knuckles. “I love you.” _I initially came here to bring my children to a safe place. You see, I’m not directly a government agent, but I do work with an agency I can’t name to you. Specifically, I’m working with the part of the agency that’s working for the assertion of mutant rights and working_ against _the part of the agency that’s working_ on _mutants. Literally. Experimentation of live subjects included and all. If you weren’t so sensible with the use of your telepathy and went digging around in, say, Logan’s past, you would find that almost every adult mutant has once been in involuntary contact with them._

Silence. Both in his head and in his ears.

“Charles?” He had to blink away the tears when he raised his head, fully expecting to be faced with horror, with revulsion, with a snarl of “Get out of my life right now.”

What he got instead was a slight smile, and then relief flooding their link so abruptly he couldn’t breathe for a second or two. “Oh, that’s all?” _You’re a government agent, Erik, and that’s all the reason you got to keep your Work a secret? Still, thank you for confiding in me._

 _I told you I’m not_ quite _a government agent. I just employ some unorthodox methods of gathering information under their cover._ Sighing, Erik finally squeezed Charles’ hands back. “And you _should_ be concerned, Charles. Your School has been a potential target all along, even before the immatriculation of my four rascals.”

“Darling. Dearest. Light of my life.” Chuckling, Charles leaned forward to rest his forehead against Erik’s, his breath carrying the remnants of his last sip of sparkling wine. “As the youth likes to put it, _We’ve been knew._ Don’t think Hank and I haven’t been planning out a defence system over the last few years. And with your help, with what you know posing as a valid incentive, we might even make it happen.”

Erik wouldn’t have put the relief he was experiencing in any flowery language like ‘his heart was free of all worry, soaring in his chest like a bird’, but he had to admit he was sorely tempted. “And what, pray tell, would that defence system be exactly?”

Charles’ thoughts were cradling his’, _warm, firm, grounding_. “The X-Men.”


	13. To Pluck a Flower

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 13 - Wildflowers 
> 
> One year has passed, and Erik decides to take their relationship a step further.

Spring had just arrived.

There was still the chill of winter in the air, and breathing quietly, Magneto kneeled down on the School’s lawn in the cover of few naked trees, with the frigid air seeping in through the cracks where his costume wasn’t sealed up properly yet. He would have to sweet-talk Beast into going over it again, even if it meant being once more bullied for his choice of colours and the fact that he would have paid any price in the world to get a cape attached (“Capes are the devil incarnate,” Hank had muttered, then enthusiastically proceeded to search out different cut patterns for Erik to leaf through).

Sending a quiet apology to the primrose at his feet – and to Lin, whose metal ornaments wound around her antlers he could feel hovering near Ororo’s Garden –, he plucked its stem from the grass, careful to not pull out its roots as he went. Against the dark purple of his gloves, the buttery yellow blossom stood out like a star in the night sky.

A soft croak above his head made Magneto look up into the beady eyes of none other than Twig (or at least he thought the crow was Twig, his daughter Whisper had made friends with the whole murder hanging around the School so he couldn’t be sure). Slowly, he raised a finger to rest it against his lips. _Hush._

But it was already too late. Wings batting the air, Twig (or the crow Magneto supposed was Twig) took to the air, pushed a few savage cries into the spring air, then disappeared towards where the School lay with everyone immersed in their afternoon classes.

 _Verdammt._ Magneto stepped his flower-gathering up a notch.

He had barely arranged a neat little bouquet of wild beauties – violets, primroses, thimbleweeds (which Charles had had sowed years ago because they reminded him of his _escapades_ in the woods near his college in Oxford) and strands of wild thyme – and bundled it all together with the one object he had so persistently tried to keep secret from his partner over the past few weeks, when the smooth motion of moving wheels faded into his consciousness, drawing closer and closer.

Then, Professor X was rounding the corner of the small stand of trees, his lightly designed wheelchair leaving a trace of crushed grass in its wake. Magneto couldn’t help giving a satisfied small smile at the woolly blue-and-yellow blanket draped securely over and around his legs (since he had moved in with Charles last autumn, Erik had found there was no better leisure time than sitting in front of the roaring fireplace and knitting shawls, gloves, socks - in short anything anyone would ask him for).

Professor X smiled back. “Magneto. What are you doing here, crawling around in the dirt? I thought you were assisting Angel with explaining thermic and its uses in flight to Aero?”

“I might have deserted from today’s X-Training. I also just might have talked Angel into _lying_ to you so I could desert from today’s X-Training.” Hands conveniently shrouded in his cape that he had bundled up at his hip, Magneto got up to loom over the wheelchair and its unsuspecting occupant. “How did you know I was out here?”

“Well… let’s just say a little birdie told me.” For a split second, one sky-blue eye disappeared behind a coy wink. “Now, will you tell me what you’ve really been up to, _old friend_?”

Wordlessly, Magneto shrugged and held out the small arrangement of wildflowers for the Professor to take from his hand, who accepted it gingerly, as if he was handling an infinitely precious treasure.

“Thank you, Erik dearest,” Charles finally whispered, dropping his teacher persona like melting snow would drip from a tree’s canopy. “You remembered we met exactly one year ago, then?”

“Yes.” Opening the latch of his cape and letting it glide to the ground proved to be quite a difficult affair when being so utterly captivated by your beloved’s most extraordinary eyes, and so was loosening your skin-tight collar and pulling off your wonderfully ridiculous leather gloves. “And so many things have changed. The ground is firm for once, and I thought this should be celebrated.”

There was a tell-tale smirk growing on Charles’ lips as he watched Erik shrugging out of the authority figure Magneto represented to their X-Men. “Indeed. And if you come here, right now, we can- Oh.”

That was the moment Erik knew Charles knew. The second Charles’ fingers had brushed the cool metal wrapped around the flowers’ twisting stems, the gold band of which Erik knew every atom so a mere thought was all he had to spare to coax it back into the shape it had been just before Charles had found him there, on his knees in the grass.

“ _Oh._ ” Where Charles’ wry anticipation had been curling in their shared mindspace only moments ago, there was now sheer astonishment. “Is that-?”

“You can call me anything you like. ‘Old friend’, ‘dearest’, ‘beloved’ and naughtier things...” Knowing his grin must look more than triumphant, Erik stalked over to straddle Charles’ lap. “But Schatz, Liebling, Geliebter, I thought we should add ‘fiancé’ to the mix.”

Charles was shuddering under his hands when Erik snaked them around his neck, and delight was radiating off him in waves. “Erik Lehnsherr, you’re incredible,” he announced and slipped the thin gold-gleaming band on his ringfinger, wide-eyed at the perfect fit. _I do not deserve you, dearest. It’s still a miracle you chose to pull me from that flowerbed last year._

“Just plucked a beautiful wildflower,” Erik drawled and then gasped as Charles leaned up to claim his lips in a kiss, soft, warm, and finally truly- _his_.


	14. Blue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 14 - Baby 
> 
> Irene and Raven add to their small Adler-Darkhölme clan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is literally 99.999% of Destique and 0.0001% of Cherik only and I regret NOTHING.

“Raven and I are having a spring baby!”

Irene would never forget that faithful day in June when she had accidentally announced this prediction to the whole crammed Common Room. It had been a long Saturday of planning Erik and Charles’ September wedding, with Armando and Alex roping in every single teacher, intern and otherwise employed person in the whole School, and Irene especially had tried to help out where she could. Flanked by Raven and Rogue, their little rascal daughter they couldn’t leave alone one second without her thinking up shenanigans, she had been employing her foresight what concerned the weather, the guests, the food options (what with Erik’s religious background and his daughter’s tendency to reason every person she ever met into being a vegetarian) and much more.

Of course, her powers had taken the strain with grace. She had been employing them ever since the day she had lost her eyesight, so they were well-trained. However, stretched so thin, over so many probability paths, it had been difficult to filter out all the useless junk of information passing her by, until something had caught her eye. Something that didn’t have anything to do with the arrival of a new pupil, or song Alison would embellish with her powers at the next Talent Show for the Gifted, or what Jas would silently let shower down onto Charles and Erik when they walked down the aisle, finally husband and husband. No, that something was _different_ . More personal, closer somehow, more tangible. It pertained Raven and her, the both of them, and then, when Irene felt the phantom pain of giving birth, the early morning nausea that hadn’t quite arrived yet, Raven moving rhythmically _inside_ of her in a night that hadn’t yet passed, she _knew._ She understood, and she knew that what she was feeling, hearing, tasting – _a small being in her arms, mewling, its teeth sharp as she let it suck on her finger –_ was not a probability, but unmovable, rock-solid, never-changing _certainty._

And she had cried out because it was nothing to be afraid of, nothing to be ashamed of, nothing to hide. Quite the contrary: To her, it was _beautiful_.

At first, everyone had had doubts, loads of them, which was quite understandable. Not even Irene – who knew her Raven was one of the most amazing, outstanding and strongest women to ever walk the Earth – had expected to ever have an actual biological child with her wife, even though she knew both of them wished for it. A little boy or girl, to keep Anna Marie company, a small sibling with whom their daughter could play, who she could protect and guide and take care of when all four of them would inevitably grow older. A new member to add to their family.

And apparently, Raven’s mutation would turn out to be potent enough for her to _father_ a child.

They did not consciously work towards it. Didn’t have sex more often with Raven in a male body or with male appendages. Didn’t buy a pregnancy test or a new crib or any baby clothes in advance. They just talked a little more, discussed name choices and one day, Raven asked Irene if she could try and predict what food would make her queasy, and what weird stuff she would crave, just so they could prepare and stock up. In short, they just lived on as ever.

At least until that Thursday shortly after Christmas, when Irene had woken up at precisely 8 AM, spent five minutes grappling for the _very_ short-term prediction a dream had brought to her on quiet wings, and then had just so managed to haul herself over to the toilet bowl before emptying her dinner from the day before into the porcelain roundel.

Later, when Raven and Irene counted back the days and months from the date of the baby’s birth, they found out that he must have been conceived in the middle of September. And in the middle of September, they had indeed spent a very long and drawn-out night together in the sheets, bodies entwined, moving in careless undulations with sweet words passed around between their lips.

In fact, it had also been the exact night which, Irene knew, Charles and Erik had spent as a brand-new married couple. She hadn’t predicted the rain of daffodils Jas had summoned for them in the gym hall (they had had to move the ceremony there because of the lousy grey autumn weather outside) when they had walked respectively wheeled down the aisle, their smiles palpable in the air, a warm and homey light even Irene could sense shining out from them, and the presence of the eternal entwinement of their futures that hadn’t changed one bit since the first time Irene had actively looked for it. What she had predicted, however, had been the fact that the earplugs every person present in the school that night had received had been sorely needed by all, and that Charles and Erik or Raven and her hadn’t been the sole cause.

So, Raven and Irene had created their very own personal people product in autumn, and Irene had given birth to it in spring. A spring baby indeed. And one with a large extended family at that.

The first thing Irene had said after Ororo had given her the tiny, bundled-up being into her arms had been a delighted, “Oh, she must be blue! Raven, you and this young lady can colour-coordinate.”

“In fact,” Ororo had laughed at her from across the improvised delivery suite, rubbing at her sullied hands with a paper towel which proved to be extraordinarily ineffective, “it’s a _him_.”

Raven had discreetly wiped her eyes, finally releasing Irene’s hand from the iron clasp she had had on it through the whole duration of the birth (eleven hours of on-and-off contractions, gosh was Irene knackered), and nodded enthusiastically. “Kurt. Our little Kurt. Charles agreed with the name choice despite… _past circumstances_ , so we’re sticking with it. It’s a sweet name, for a sweet baby.” And then, she had bent down, breath ghosting over Irene’s breasts where she knew her son’s head was resting, and cooed, “Yes you’re sweet, the sweetest thing evereverever, aren’t you?”

“Leave our son alone, woman, and kiss me instead,” Irene had griped jokingly, pulling up her wife into a small peck on the lips before focusing back on her son, safe in her arms after so many days and weeks and months of being safe in her body. “Also, I think he’s got quite a few surprises waiting for us.”

His elf ears perking up against the skin of her chest, head moving just a bit – probably to stare up them, his _parents_ , and Irene found herself still slightly disbelieving despite the very real small warm body pressed up against her –, the baby had let out a small mewl. Then, Irene had felt a tail with a very, _very_ pointy-feeling tip worm its way out of the cloud-soft blanket Kurt was wrapped in, and at her side, Raven had gasped.

“Oh my lord.” Her wife probably had never sounded more overjoyed. “I would _totally_ die for him.”

Charles and Erik were among the very first people to visit Irene in her room-turned-nursery and hold a merely hours old Kurt in their arms, since their were basically his uncles in spirit, and that came with certain privileges. And they had brought an additional visitor: Edie Lehnsherr who, Irene knew, was the mother Charles and Raven had never had, and the grandmother their Kurt deserved so wholly.

Irene was exhausted and therefore snoozing away in the weak spring sunlight filtering in through the window for most of their visit, but she enjoyed the few minutes she was fully there. Charles was cooing over Kurt, Erik was cooing over Kurt, Edie was cooing over Kurt. In short, their son seemed to already have a developed tendency to take everyone’s heart by storm.

Curled into Irene’s side, yawning already even though it was barely evening, Anna Marie whispered, “But ah’ll still be your daughter? Even if you have a real son now?”

Smiling, Irene pulled her closer, into the embrace of her arms, and felt their daughter's small heartbeat both with worry and elation. “Sweetheart. You have been our real daughter all along, too, and you will always be. Us having one child more in our family won’t change that one bit.”

Evidently satisfied by that response, Anna Marie nodded against her chest, then, with a quiet innocent sigh, burrowed deeper under the blankets and fell into the land of dream. Irene knew that particular discussion would reoccur as long as Anna Marie lived to ask Raven and her about their family relationships, but for now, there was nothing but warm, cosy silence and quiet joy at them being all whole and together.

From across the room came Charles’ melodious giggle, and then the deep rumble of Erik’s voice as he said, “Schatz, you should give it back to Raven now, or she’ll believe you want to steal him away and add to our own collection of children.”

“My boy!” Edie’s voice, full of sunshine and laughter. “ _It_ is, in fact, a him, our lovely May baby here, and I do believe Charles does have quite enough at his hands with taking care of your four lovely whirlwinds, and then the whole School!”

“Hey.” Raven, piping up to put some things right. “Erik, no, let your Mom hold him for another second or two, she hasn’t seen his amazing little teeth yet. Can’t believe they’re out already, and they’re almost as sharkish as yours. And Edie, by the way, thank you so much for your generous gift! The kids will absolutely _love_ your rugelach, and the fact that you brought some for the _whole School, Edie, how did you manage that?_ ”

“With the help of my boundless love for you all, my dears,” the woman gave back, and the room erupted into laughter, making Anna Marie stir slightly at Irene’s side. Then, it grew quieter again, with Edie murmuring the occasional endearment to her stepson (Irene wasn’t sure at all if that was the correct term, but as long as love went hand in hand with it, she couldn’t care less for its justness) and the blankets on Charles’ lap rustling, probably because Erik had decided the small couch in the Adler-Darkhölme quarters wasn’t as comfortable as his husband’s thighs. Outside, Irene heard the wind whisper softly in the budding tree branches, with birds giving their songs into its care so their message of love and life and birth could be carried for miles and miles.

What seemed like hours later, Erik and Charles and Edie bid their goodbyes, taking with them the last agitation of the day. Then, Raven was there, at Irene’s side, humming a lullaby to their newest blue addition.

Irene smiled, and for her next words, she didn’t even need her mutant power. “He will have a good life, a good family here, Raven. The best family.” 

And despite her unseeing eyes, she knew Raven was nodding and smiling as she thought of her brother, his husband, their School. Yes, the best family indeed. 


	15. Finger weg!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 15 - Dessert 
> 
> "Finger weg!" - "Hands off!" in German. 
> 
> Erik is making rugelach, and Charles and Lorna do nothing to help him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm just following the trend of everyone automatically linking Dessert to Smutty Sweetness xD only at the very end though.

“No! Finger weg!”

“What?” Smiling what he hoped was an innocent smile, Charles licked the walnut-and-cinnamon rugelach filling from his fingers and moaned over-dramatically. “Oh, Erik, delicious! I _can’t believe_ you never made this for us before! The students will love it, they certainly loved Edie’s last time.”

“They won’t get to love it-” Glowering at him from across the kitchen counter, Erik raised a hand and levitated the polished-steel bowl out of Charles’ reach- “if you eat all the filling first. Hands off.”

“Hm. Sure.” With growing amusement, Charles watched as Lorna leaned up on her tiptoes when Erik had his back turned to her, and dipped her own fingers in the bowl of sticky sweetness, eyes wide and guilty but bright with enjoyment. Their gazes met, and she smiled conspiratorially, smearing the rugelach filling all over her hair when she pushed her locks back behind her ears.

At Charles’ chuckle, Erik turned, stubborn focus bleeding into fond exasperation when he caught their daughter red-handed (or well, brown-handed, if you preferred it literally). “Lorna! This is unbelievable, I’m being betrayed by my own blood!”

Giggling, the girl tried to slip out from under her father’s hands reaching for her, but it was too late. “But Papaaa, it’s just so sweet, you can’t leave it standing around and then think we don’t wanna try,” she whined half-heartedly when Erik picked her up and settled her onto his hip, then tickled her sides until she was squirming, crying with tears of laughter and begging him to stop.

“I hope this will teach you to steal other people’s dessert,” he finally grumbled, ruffled her hair and then planted a kiss on top of her head.

Charles watched quietly and smiled to himself, memorising every detail. There was their daughter’s clear, high giggle, her golden delight curling around her mind like her vibrant green locks around her head. There was the soft afternoon light, slanting in from the open kitchen window, the fresh smell of spring flowers close on its heels. And there were his husband’s dimples when he smiled, the curve of his strong hands as he held Lorna securely, his grey-green-blue spring storm eyes when he looked up from her to meet Charles’ own-

“Charles? Hello, Earth to Charles! What do you think, Sternchen,” Erik said and winked down at Lorna, “do we need to organise a space mission now? To rescue our dearest Professor from whatever spell has befallen him?”

“Yes, Paps, yes, we need to rescue Dad!” And then Lorna screamed with excitement as Erik swung her up higher, onto his shoulders, and rounded the kitchen counter, bending this way and that way, laughing just as his daughter did.

Charles couldn’t help joining in, overwhelmed by the warmth making Erik and his’ shared mindspace vibrate, almost burst, and he was still laughing when he held out his arms to welcome Lorna into them, to pull her close against his chest and bury his nose in her hair which smelled of her children’s shampoo, of flour and the rugelach’s oh-so sought-after filling. “Now, now,” he murmured when they had finally calmed down, “I’m back, you’ve got me back. For nothing in the world would I want to miss out on your father’s delicious baking, my dear, and that’s the exact same reason for why I’ve talked him into taking these teaching courses so he can give us cooking classes.”

Erik snorted, now sat at Charles’ feet on the tiled floor, and groused, “It takes more than a few lousy compliments to appease the wounded honour of a chef. Charles, _you stole from my filling with your bare hands_ , I do at least deserve a kiss.”

They ignored Lorna’s squeak of “Yuck, gross!” when Charles caved and leaned down, his lips meeting Erik’s tenderly, like the first spring flowers opening their blossoms to bloom in all their radiance. On his ringfinger, Charles could feel a steady pulse, Erik’s way of grounding them, of marking the way _he and Charles_ just had to be. In response, Charles sent the warmth of recognition, of however far apart they would maybe find themselves later, they were together here and now.

He hummed and licked his lips after it was over. “Now that was an exceptionally sweet kiss. Erik, by any chance, have Lorna and I not been the only ones to taste that filling in advance?”

“ _Paps_ ,” came their daughter’s betrayed gasp promptly, and Erik shot him an exhausted glare before the inevitable back-and-forth of “But I’m the cook, I’m allowed to taste,” and “But Paps, _no fair!_ ” began.

“If you’ll excuse me, I have an English class to teach,” Charles murmured when the war waged between the small mutant on his lap and the bigger one on the floor started to escalate dangerously, with the metal handrails and the spokes of his wheelchair vibrating increasingly.

Without sparing even one thought to him, Lorna let herself be pushed off his lap and came to stand on the tiles in front of her father instead, still deeply engrossed in their argument about rugelach filling tasting rights. However, just as Charles had passed the kitchen’s door-sill and was wheeling down the hall towards his study to pick up his teaching material, Erik growled into his head, _Don’t think I won’t make you regret this, after dinner, after everyone else has gone to bed._

 _Oh, sweet Erik_ , Charles thought back and smiled a hello at some passing students, _you can try. I don’t mind being your last course_ at all _._

Erik’s last words before his focus faded away from him and back onto their daughter and the rugelach made a pleasant shiver run down Charles’ spine. _Oh yes indeed. I’m sure you’ll make the sweetest dessert._

Spoiler: Erik was right.


	16. The Valley Behind Your Eyelids

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 16 - Hiking 
> 
> Charles takes Erik on a special kind of hike.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a bit weird but I had a lovely walk down memory lane while writing it so: Enjoy!

Erik breathed in and closed his eyes.

Birds were tweeting around him in the balmy spring air. The sun was chasing away the early morning coolness to coax the trees’ leaves out of their bark cradles, and the gravel of the ascending path beneath his feet was solid, its sharp edges easily felt through the soles of his walking boots. When he opened his eyes again, small mosquitoes were dancing around him, but not soaring down to sting, and for miles and miles in the forest surrounding him, there was not an atom of metal to be felt.

“Erik, come!” From around a bend in the hiking trail, Charles’ voice barrelled bright green with excitement and exertion. “Erik! I found the well!”

Huffing, Erik turned from the spectacular view of the valley he could glimpse through the half-bared branches of the tree canopies above him and clambered the last few feet up and around the bend, until he had rejoined his husband who was already sat down on a small fountain’s edge. The water seemed to trickle from a rusty metal pipe hammered directly into the rocky side of the mountain they were climbing. It was clear and cold as ice when Erik submerged his hands in it, then splattered some drops into his face and rubbed the sweat and dust of their ascent away. At his side, Charles had bent down to drink directly from the source, then reached behind his back and pulled his metal flask from a side pocket of his backpack to fill it to the brim.

“How long have we been walking already?” Erik asked when he had blinked the mixture of sweat and spring water from his eyes. To him, it had seemed like hours, days, weeks.

“A few minutes, I guess,” Charles answered, then shielded his eyes against the sun to look up into the narrow stripe of sky above them, blue and resplendent between the tree canopies. “But actually, it’s nearing noon in this place, so I would say about two to three hours. You know, time works differently here.”

Erik called for his own water bottle, then remembered he didn’t have control over metal anymore and pulled off his backpack to reach for it and fill it again as well. “And how much longer?”

“I say...” Charles murmured, then trailed off. His auburn hair was slicked back with sweat, and there were tiny droplets on his neck, his shoulders, exposed under the collar of his olive-green hiking shirt. Erik would have very much liked to lick him there, taste the salt of him on his tongue, kiss the heat away.

“Huh. I want to reach the summit when the sun is at its highest, and before the sun rises, if possible, so I’m shortening this last part of our march.” Groaning, Charles bent down to tighten the shoelaces on his left hiking shoe, the hem of his shorts riding up over his knees and thighs as he did so.

Erik watched mutely. He hadn’t known Charles could get a tan, even if it was just a light dusting of brown freckles.

“Alright, I’m ready if you are!” Charles straightened back up, the smile on his face so bright it rivalled the spring sun shining in the sky, and then he pulled Erik down for a quick, salt-tinged kiss and grabbed the straps of his backpack. “Let’s go! We’re on the final stretch now!”

“Yes, we are,” Erik replied quietly to his husband’s departing backside, and only when Charles was already a few steps ahead of him did he give himself a push to follow him, up the slope of the narrow gravel path, under budding tree branches, between brambles and wild strawberries.

“You’re not doing nothing though. You go swim laps in the School’s indoor sports pool twice a week, you exercise regularly, you’re out helping in Ororo’s Garden and the rest of the grounds when you’ve got the time and the weather’s not too lousy for your tastes. Oh, thank you, Schatz.” Erik accepted the apple Charles offered him and took one crunching bite. Perfect. Not too sweet, not too sour, not mealy at all but solid and juicy. He swallowed. “Hmm. But I see why you miss this.”

 _This_ was the greening valleys and mountain peaks lied out beneath the cliff they were sat on, stretching on to the horizon and beyond. _This_ was just the two of them – with not another soul for hundreds and hundreds of miles around – sharing the lunch they had found packed away in their bags, feet dangling over a drop that in any other situation where Erik didn’t possess his powers would have made him queasy. _This_ was Charles smiling and laughing and chatting away with a happy glow different from the one Erik was used to, which wasn’t a surprise since his husband had just hiked up a few hundred metres in altitude on his own two legs.

Charles chewed and swallowed the last bite of his cheese-and-cucumber sandwich. “Yes. Swimming and gardening are nice, but I don’t ever really get _out_ and _away_ like when I’m hiking. And as much as I’ve gotten used to being in a wheelchair, I occasionally can’t help missing my legs. And how good they would look.” A frown passed over his forehead, like a forlorn cloud on a sunny day such as this one, and it was gone just as swiftly.

Sighing, Erik rolled onto his back and lowered his head down onto Charles’ unusually firm and thick thighs. “Your legs are magnificent, Liebling, in any form.” Behind his closed eyelids, red shadows danced, and the sun softly caressed his cheeks and forehead, not burning as the real one would. “And I know I’ve said it about a hundred times already, but I’ll say it again: I am utterly devastated by your mind’s capability to dream like _this_.”

“Perks of being a telepath. Our mutation drives us to map the entirety of our mind, down to the smallest nook and cranny, so lucid dreaming is a child’s play.” There was a smile in Charles’ voice, like the sun’s warmth absorbed in the soil after a long summer’s day. His hand came down, fingers carding through Erik’s hair lined with sweat and the occasional leaf or fir tree needle it had accumulated when they had had to duck under branches.

Erik breathed in.

Erik breathed out.

Erik was at peace.

“Is it always spring in your mind?” he asked after a few minutes of companionable silence, remembering the winter storm that was currently howling around the mansion, painting the night blacker than despair.

“Yes,” Charles replied slowly, reverently almost. When Erik peeked out from under his eyelashes, he was staring off into the blue-white haze beyond the horizon, where the sun was slowly setting in flames and embers. “It’s always spring, because there’s always hope.”

Erik didn’t know what to reply to this universal truth, so he just bored on, “And have you ever been to this place? It’s- I don’t know. There are no words. I’ve never seen such a landscape before, not even in photographs.”

Calmly, Charles reached sideways and plucked a single gentian from the meadow they had chosen to rest on, the blossom almost – but not quite – as radiantly blue as Raven’s skin. Then, he proceeded to tuck it in behind Erik’s ear, grinning proudly when their eyes met. “I don’t know either. I don’t think I’ve ever been here. Maybe as a child, but if so, I can’t remember.” Gently, his fingers came to ghost over Erik’s lips, his forehead, his cheekbones, his eyelids when he shut them again, the touch so light it was almost non-existent. “Or maybe I copied it from someone’s mind, during memory work, or rather, my subconscious did. It has a tendency to try and collect pretty things, such as you. Or maybe I just… thought it up myself. Anyway, I’m glad I get to share it with you.”

“Yes. Yes, I’m glad too,” Erik murmured, frowning at how heavy his tongue suddenly lay in his mouth, how drowsy his head was. “Charles, this is beautiful. You’re beautiful, thank you for pulling me over into your dream. But what’s happening to me?”

“I think it’s time you left.” His husband’s eyes were so far away all of a sudden, fixed on the horizon again, and his hands felt see-through when they slowly lifted Erik’s head from his lap and laid it down to let the grass cradle it instead. “You always wake up so early. I’ll see you in the morning.” And with that, Charles stood up, the dying sun painting red highlights on his cheeks and front and lips, and walked to the edge of the cliff, leaving Erik to fall asleep on the softly buzzing meadow behind him.

The last thing Erik saw before his eyelids fluttered shut was his most beloved one’s silhouette, grey against the fiery dusk, translucent and light and hovering just a few inches over the ground. And for a split second, Erik felt himself there, beside Charles, holding his hand as they rose higher and higher, leaving the woods and the gentian blossoms and all the world’s weight behind, exchanging it for the sky and the infinity beyond.

Erik woke slowly, to the moaning and groaning of the wind outside, to the snowflakes being battered against the windowpanes, to the drab light of a winter's dawn that was still to come.

Of course, Charles was still asleep when he rolled over and quietly got up, pulled on his dressing gown and his slippers, then rounded the bed to squat down so he could watch his husband’s face more closely. Swaddled up in blankets like that, lower body motionless, his hair mussed and lips slightly parted, Charles could not have been farther from his dream self. And still, Erik thought he looked just as beautiful as he had in that extraordinary sunlight, on the meadow, pinning that gentian behind Erik’s ear (he couldn’t help his hand wandering up there quickly, only to feel nothing but air and emptiness, but he _knew_ it had been there).

Softly, Charles sighed, eyes twitching in the embrace of dream. And Erik smiled and bent down to ghost the lightest of kisses onto them; onto the valley behind his eyelids.


	17. Bamf!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 17 - Travel 
> 
> If Charles wants something from Erik, he'll get it. And if it's just a few days on a Cuban beach made possible by lucky circumstances.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Screw the Cuba Beach Divorce. Screw. It.

_Alright, hear me out. How about you stay down there, Erik, and I join you after you’ve cleaned this place up, and we pass a nice week or two at the beach?_

“ _What?"_

Magneto’s exasperation bled through the whole X-Squad’s mental link and wrung a groan from the White Queen. Of course, the Professor would bring his love life’s affairs up when they were fully immersed in combat, it was just such a Charles-thing to do. Except that-

 _Now’s really not the time, sugar_ , Emma sent Charles through their private backchannel while kicking one of the armoured baseline guards in the groin, then sending another one to the floor with a well-placed slap under his jaw. _Could you and Erik maybe discuss your travel plans later? When we’re through with this whole ordeal?_

And of course, Charles would also never _listen_. To anyone. He was just that kind of stubborn mule, that view Emma shared with Raven, Erik, Hank, Logan- in short, with too many people to list them all.

 _Erik_ , he said, discorporated voice clear like a bell in everyone’s heads, _holidays. You, me, here in Brazil. I know you would prefer Cuba, but since you’re already in place, and Jean’s quite experienced enough to handle the School by herself for a few days-_

The metal door leading to the core of the database they were attacking peeled back with an awful screech Emma couldn’t have tolerated if she hadn’t wisely turned herself to diamond for their mission, and Magneto stalked through, pointing at the rows and rows of electronic storage units, then at Jubilee, and all while mentally hissing, _Charles, now is not the time._

_Emma told me already, dear, and I don’t agree. You’re doing quite well down there and you know I’m safely tucked away in Cerebro a few thousand miles up North, so where’s the problem with multitasking and planning some free-time, since we’re already on it?_

Frowning with barely veiled confusion, Jubilee stumbled out of the cover Emma had provided with her translucent body (the girl could handle herself, combat training and protectively designed X-Suit and all, but Emma wouldn’t take any risks when her children were concerned) and made for the databank in which the identities of all mutant and pro-mutant individuals active in the whole of Brazil were located. No more back-up copies, those had already been taken out by the X-Men beforehand.

“Charles, _no_ ,” Magneto sighed out loud and slapped the last conscious guard’s gun in his visored face. To the White Queen, the guy’s mind dimmed as he fell to the ground, and she smiled what she knew was her famously cold and merciless smile. All human threats eliminated.

 _I would love some holidays, and yes, the X-Men have been active for five years already and know how to handle themselves, too, but_ , Erik said, mental voice strained, “How would you even get down here in appropriate time? Don’t think I’ll just sit around alone in a motel until you’ve caught a good flight that’s not the Blackbird.”

Silence. Telepathic radio silence, to be exact.

Emma thought if she focussed hard enough, she could probably hear Charles’ unconscious, the thoughts flitting around in the back of his head, like someone breathing down a telephone speaker when no one was talking.

Then, _That is actually a good point._ Now Charles definitely sounded butthurt, Emma wasn’t imagining that.

“See,” Erik grumbled, attention bleeding from their mental link as he turned and looked over to where the storage components were beginning to smoulder, sparks flying up from cracks in their surface like microscopic fireflies. Apparently, Jubilee had finally done what the White Queen had taken her down here to do and had sent about a dozen of her energy plasmoids through the net of circuits and plastic (Magneto could have fried the data himself, but Emma preferred for her most promising students to gather as much experience in the field as possible where their mutant powers were concerned, and Jubilee’s really were quite something).

Then, something happened. Or rather, someone did. Two someones, to be exact.

From one second to the other, there was the stench of sulphur in the air, the substance twirling lazily just in front of the hole where the steel door to the compound had been before it had had the misfortune to encounter Magneto. The White Queen had whirled around as soon as she had felt the two minds blink into existence, and her two teammates followed suit, Jubilee squatting down and bouncing one of her fireworks between her hands in anticipation of another tussle. Mags was just standing still as a statue at the White Queen’s side, mind churning away with an unplaceable feeling as Professor X watched through all their eyes.

No one moved.

Surprisingly, the newcomers didn’t look like mutants brainwashed by the Brazilian government into maiming them, the White Queen noticed. Actually, they quite looked like an independent unit from the FBI, in black suits, with guns in shoulder holsters and exceptionally good shielding she wouldn’t be able to push through without some psyonic effort. Also, one of them was red.

“Huh,” just that one finally exclaimed, a tail not unlike that of Raven and Irene’s son flicking out from behind him. “I guess someone just beat us to our mission.” His voice was heavy with a Russian accent, and his fingers flitted around in front of his chest to form what looked like sign language. So, his Latino colleague was deaf, then. The White Queen hesitated. Was that to be counted as an advantage to the X-Squad?

Magneto’s voice cut through the air thick with tension before she could put that theory to the test. “Azazel? Is that you?”

Eyes narrowed in irritation, the red one fixed Erik with a glare- and his traits softened, lit up with recognition as his arms widened as if in anticipation of an embrace. “Da! Erik, you rascal sweetheart, you just took all the fun from us! We wanted to blow this place up, too, for the American government! But what business brings you here?”

“Same as you, I believe: saving mutantkind from peril,” Erik replied, lips softening in a smile. Then, he turned to give Emma and Jubilee a nod. “They’re colleagues I used to work with. Haven’t seen them since I cut all ties to the US secret service- even though we promised to stay in contact.”

There was the rustle of fabric as the other mutant began gesturing, his long black hair trembling with the energy he put into it, eyes dark as coal burning with what Emma recognised to be determination shaped by a life lived with courage. Quietly, Charles asked her – and only her -, _Do you know sign language?_

She sent a negating feeling in response, felt him shrug and then turn his attention to his spouse, who seemed to follow the conversation more clearly.

 _These are Azazel and Janos, teleporter and whatever you call someone who can spin really fast and basically create projectiles from his own bones. Janos is currently using some words I’d rather not repeat concerning the fact that I haven’t even tried to make contact with them in years, and he also tells me my cape looks ridiculous_ , Erik finally clarified.

Emma snorted. _And damn is he correct about that last one._

_Emma._

_Erik._

_A teleporter, you said?_ Charles piped up, hope pouring unashamedly through their connection. _What’s his range again?_

Erik, already launching into answering hand gestures, stilled. “No. No, Charles, no. There’s no way I’ll let you do that.”

Of course, there was a way, as always. It was a well-known fact in the whole School that if you wanted Erik Lehnsherr to do something, you just had to bring _Charles Xavier_ to want Erik Lehnsherr to do that thing, and you could consider it to be done (Emma knew best, since she was one of the more frequent users of this method). Charles Xavier was just convincing like that.

So, that was how only hours after completing a mission for the greater good of mutantkind, she found herself lying on a Cuban beach, in a pristine white bikini and with a big nice Pina Colada in hand, while listening to her newest acquaintances’ ears being talked off by an overly curious Professor X. Just to her left, the great Magneto, Master of Magnetism and feared by all human governments, was lounging on his cape and pouting the minutes away quietly, clad in nothing but a speedo Azazel had bamfed over from the School.

“So,” Charles was saying, stumbling over the words in sign language, “you got to know each other in that covert mission led by Moira MacTaggert, the geneticist? And you’ve been married for what, nine years now?”

Sighing contentedly, Emma closed her eyes, breathed in the salty sea breeze and listened to the waves sloshing calmly against the sand. There was the shadow of palm leaves undulating over her diamond-clear body, and just for a minute, she hoped Charles had taken similar precautions plus some sunscreen, what with his fickle pale skin and all.

Suddenly, the grey spring drizzle at home seemed so much farther away than just one sulphurous bamf, and that was a benediction.

“Eleven years, sweetheart, a big few more than you. You know, if Erik does not mind, we can teach you some… _tricks_ for good marriage,” Azazel’s low rumble came, and when she glanced over from under her lashes, Janos was signing wildly, something along the lines of “Stop flirting with your friend’s husband, you horny oaf,” she found out when she tapped into his mind for translation.

Erik at her side groaned, then got up and clambered over Emma’s legs to cuddle up possessively against his spouse’s backside. She sent him an annoyed _Watch where you’re going_ for it and brushed the sand he had sprayed all over her from her perfectly flat tummy, admiring the six-pack she had been training for ever since her adolescence as she went.

Charles might just have blushed a little at the teleporter’s implication, but reached around to lace Erik’s fingers together with his, then bored on. “That’s lovely. And you don’t think of retiring from FBI services anytime soon? Maybe to pursue... another kind of professional career?”

Now, that piqued Emma’s interest. She propped herself up on her elbows and listened closely. Understanding was dawning from under the foggy confusion on the other mutants’ faces as Charles smiled on, eyes twinkling with faked innocence, and they glanced over at their discarded black suits on the sand.

“You wouldn’t have one or two free teaching positions?” Janos asked, fingers trembling with excitement.

Erik groaned and buried his face in the crook between Charles’ shoulder and jaw.

“Actually, we do,” Charles confirmed, nodding enthusiastically. “Also, we’re always in need of someone who’ll spare us the travel costs for summer camps and such.”

Erik’s groans grew more desperate. Azazel smirked, tail snaking over to pat Charles’ thigh suggestively, promptly knocked off course by Janos’ nimble fingers which closed around it and began to stroke it absent-mindedly.

“I think, little sunshine eyes,” the teleporter purred, “you just got yourself a very lucrative deal.”

Emma just smiled and let her eyes slip shut again. Oh yes. She wouldn’t mind some free travel either.


	18. Sky-High and Magnetised

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 18 - Sky 
> 
> It's time for Lorna to explore the full extents of her mutant power.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tireeed, my head is going to kill me tomorrow for posting this so late today, but oh well. No price is high enough for fluff <3

One nice clear morning which promised to turn into an even nicer and clearer day, Charles was woken early by what he first mistook for a draught in their bedroom.

However, he soon found out he was sorely mistaken.

“Dads, dads, look outside,” came Pietro’s voice from somewhere to his right, and then to his left, “it’s the first sunny day in weeks!” and then from somewhere Charles previously hadn’t thought it was physically possible to be when you were a young, healthy and well-nourished adult, “Lorna said she’s going to throw a tantrum if Paps doesn’t teach her how to fly, like he promised!”

At Charles’ side, Erik’s mind was already wide awake, alight with confusion and the steel-hearted determination to solve this riddle their children were confronting them with (like they had so many times before, just with other demands, with other causes and results). This came as no surprise. After all, his spouse was rather a morning person.

Charles, however, wasn’t.

But before he could groan and screw his eyes shut again and maybe disappear under their heap of blankets and comforters forever (it was only _spring_ , after all, and, like, seven o’clock in the morning, so he didn’t feel like freezing his ears off) – or give Pietro a nice little telepathic shove out the door – a mind drew nearer in the hallway outside their quarters, a consciousness so similar to Erik’s Charles couldn’t help being startled anytime he touched this particular thought pattern. Apparently, mutations did not only shape the body, but the mind, too, and Lorna Lehnsherr-Xavier, daughter of Erik Lehnsherr (and Charles Xavier, if you wanted to believe the adoption papers and not regular human anatomy), was the perfect illustration to that finding.

Lorna, their beautiful, lovely, gorgeous youngest daughter, who had seemingly decided that today had come the day on which her feet would for the first time leave the ground for good. Dear god, children.

“Paps!” And oh, there she was already, storming through the doorframe like she didn’t care at all if they were naked or clothed under their covers (on other days she liked to complain lengthily about this issue, but not today, obviously). “Papa, it’s been five months now since my sixteenth birthday, and you promised me that as soon as I was sixteen, you would teach me how to fly, but you haven’t!”

Erik had sat up against the headboard, rubbing the sleep from his eyes with one hand and the other automatically going in search of Charles’. Now, he was staring at his daughter like she had suddenly grown a second head (not that improbable, if you considered all the secondary mutations Charles had had to see with his own two eyes in his lifetime). “I did?”

“You did!” Her hands on her hips, vibrantly green hair in a messy tousle floating around her head, she very much resembled a bloodthirsty Erinye. Erik’s mind was going a mile a minute, and bloody hell was Charles glad he was not in his husband’s shoes. Judging from how there was a barely one coalescent thought forming in his brain right now, he wouldn’t have been able to deal with _kids_ of all the things life would throw at him.

Lorna continued, unfazed by their non-existent feedback. “You said that as soon as I turned sixteen, you would teach me to fly, because you think then my powers are honed and strong enough to carry me. But it’s been _months_ since my birthday, and you haven’t. You always said it was too cold or too cloudy or to wet outside to concentrate, but _now_ , spring has arrived, it’s sunny, and you just have to teach me!”

“Fair enough,” Erik grunted and popped his spine, then sent Charles (who hadn’t even bothered to lift his head from the pillow) a rather suffering look. “But has it to be _this early_? You know your Dad likes to sleep in.”

_Erik no._

But it was too late. “Daaad,” came Lorna’s insistent whine, “pleeease, you can’t just let him get away with this? You’re awake already, anyway!”

Groaning, with his vision blurring as he tried to blink the last remnants of the land of dream from his eyes, Charles heaved himself up onto his elbows. “Lorna. Pietro-” He shot the latter a scolding look when the young man finally came to a standstill from where he had probably run a hundred laps around the School grounds- “next time, you should consider other people’s privacy and need for sleep. But because it’s you, my dearest, most wonderful offsprings,” he said, softening his tone as much as he could afford with his usual morning grumpiness still clinging to him, “we’re going to make an extra effort right now and join you out on the lawn in five minutes.”

The cheers erupting through the room almost made him dive right back under the covers, but when even a sleep-ruffled Wanda dragged herself over the doorsill and joined in just a tad bit belatedly, he could only smile and grasp Erik’s hand tighter.

 _Happy now?_ he sent Erik, together with the sensation of a morning kiss (a method they had adopted years ago, since it both spared them their awful morning breath).

 _Very much so_ , Erik replied and squeezed back. _Now, let’s get ourselves in some clothes, and then we’re teaching my daughter how to grasp for the sky._

When they walked respectively wheeled out the veranda door onto the grassy stretch behind the School, just to the right of the basketball court and Ororo’s Garden and the pergola, a crowd of decent size had already gathered around the area which Pietro had cleared from the cast-iron benches, tables and chairs at which the students would usually find themselves to chatter, study or eat. Now, however, there fluttered only the occasional whisper through the air, an overall tension pushing Charles to layer on his mental shields thicker. Lorna was there already, her three siblings not far from her at the edge of the circle that had formed around her, and she stood tall and proud in nothing but a washed-out pair of jeans and a neon green t-shirt. Strands of grass had caught between her naked toes, and once again, Charles wondered how he had become so lucky as to have the honour of becoming the part-time parent of such amazing young minds.

A ripple of “There he is!” and “It’s happening!” went through the crowd as they opened a passage in their midst to let Erik through. The excitement and curiosity churning all around Charles magnified, fuelled by the sight of one of their X-Men, and he slowly rolled to the front himself.

Quickly, he established a private link between his youngest daughter and his husband. _I’m here if anything goes amiss, or if you need help with fine control. We’re prepared for anything._ However, when raised his eyes only to see Irene and the serene smile on her lips only a few feet from him on the other edge of the circle, Raven with toddler Kurt on her shoulders and Anna Marie by her hand, he knew Lorna would meet – if not surpass – everyone’s expectations without difficulty.

Again, a tremor made the crowd shudder like young leaves in the wind, and when Charles looked up, both Lorna and Erik had kneeled down, his hand over hers in the grass, palm down, like they wanted to feel Earth’s very heartbeat.

In their minds, however, the most spectacular lightshow Charles had ever seen took place. Not even Jubilation’s plasmoid creations could rival the Lehnsherrs’ perception of their planet’s magnetic field as they reached out and down and across the globe, Lorna’s power first riding along on Erik’s, then suddenly flowing outwards to expand on their own accord, like a flower opening its blossom for the very first time.

Gasps were heard all around as from one moment to another, all metal in the vicinity began to tremble, closely followed by small arcs of dust and soil and pebbles forming over the Lehnsherrs’ joined hands.

“It looks like those schematics we’re looking at in physics,” Bobby whispered loudly at John beside him, and everyone nodded.

“Magnetic fields and their relations made visible,” Hank murmured and scribbled something down onto his notepad. “Fascinating.”

“And this,” Erik suddenly croaked out with the veins on his neck and temples throbbing with tension, “is only the beginning.” Then, slowly, gently, he lifted his hand from the ground, Lorna following closely, everyone around them taking a wary step backwards.

Only Charles remained where he was, hands glued to the metal handrails of his wheelchair, eyes to two of the people he held most dearest in life. _You can do it, my loves._

 _We can_ , Erik agreed privately, only in their shared mindspace, and out loud he told Lorna, “Do you feel it? In your bones, in your brain, in your mind? Do you _see_ where the handholds are, where the footholds are, where you only have to hold on so you will be lifted up and can ride along?”

For a heartbeat, Lorna didn’t reply. And in that split-second, not one of the assembled mutant students and teachers dared to draw a breath.

Then, their daughter uttered a quiet “Yes,” and her feet left the ground.

Now, only that in and on itself wasn’t anything special yet. Under Erik’s care, she had already learned how to levitate, how to hold herself airborne for a few seconds, a few inches off the grounds.

But what followed this time was more than that. Extraordinary. Exceptional.

In one swift but controlled upwards arc, Lorna took to the sky, hair soaring in the air behind her, face turned upwards into the icy morning blue. And then she was smiling, laughing, cheering, soon joined by everyone watching from the ground, before she decided to explore her new-found freedom: a rocky looping here, a hesitant sidestep there, and by the minute, she grew more confident, more secure in her tumbling and dancing through the sky, until Ororo and Angel took off themselves to frolic through the warming spring air beside her.

In the commotion that followed, with some running after the airborne mutants over the lawn and others staying behind to chat and swoon and squeal in excitement over what they had just witnessed, Erik stalked over and came to a halt in front of Charles, towering over him in all his still-rumpled morning glory.

Charles looked right back, knowing he most probably looked no better. “Your daughter is a fast learner.”

“Our daughter,” Erik corrected him, then bent down and made himself comfortable on Charles’ lap. “Ugh. Did you see that? I felt her powers beside mine, sliding along, and then they were suddenly all around, almost what you would call all-encompassing. She’s _powerful_ , Charles, she could change the world.”

“So could you. So could anyone here,” Charles whispered and leaned forward to rub his nose against his husband’s jaw, his cheeks, the nape of his neck, delighting in the shudder it wrung from the otherwise so collected man. “She belongs here, with us, and now she belongs to the sky as well. Just as you do. Have you ever thought of flying away, just leaving all your worries behind?”

“Never.” Erik’s hand grappled blindly for his and held on tight when he found it. “I might belong to the sky, but I belong to you even more so.”

And at that, what else was Charles supposed to do but chuckle and lean in and kiss Erik right then and there? There, amidst the diminishing groups of their mutant children and sisters and brothers heading back to their dorms in the early morning sunlight. There, on that very spot where their daughter had learned to fly and embraced the privilege she had had the luck to be born with.

There, under the blue and blank and wide open sky that – in Erik’s opinon – had _absolutely nothing_ on Charles.


	19. Erik the Weatherman

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 19 - Rain 
> 
> Erik makes a prediction, Charles doesn't listen, and that's how they both end up wet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is so random but it'll only get worse from now on because I'm running out of ideas xD nevertheless hope you enjoy and are generally safe and sound!

“It’s going to rain tomorrow,” Erik announced one late May evening, voice quiet and determined.

Charles put aside the children’s book he was considering to send to Jean for their newly established kindergarten in the suburbs of New York and looked down at his husband. “Oh? How do you know?”

His husband, who he had believed to be half-asleep already what with the way his brainwaves were coming and going in a steady pulse, raised his head from where he had rested it on Charles’ belly. His eyes were the colour of storm clouds, swirls still as captivating as when Charles had first laid sight on them. But he stayed mute, just looked up at Charles, his smile tired and hair rumpled from their long day running the School.

“Don’t tell me you can feel it in your bones,” Charles finally said and let go of his book entirely to occupy his hands with burying themselves in Erik’s coiffure instead. Hmm, soft. “You’re not forty yet, there’s no way you’re old enough to get foreboding pains. What is it, love?”

“Hrrm,” Erik moaned intelligibly and pushed his head forward into Charles’ palms, his arms tightening where they were slung around his spouse’s hips, before he mumbled, “There’s magnetic disturbances in the air. Just… clouds and lightning. Ah yes, do that again.”

Charles did ‘that’ again (which was gently kneading the juncture of Erik’s skull and spine) and sighed, glancing at the alarm clock on the bedside table. “So you tell me that outdoors lesson to enhance the flair of Jane Austen’s works I’ve planned for tomorrow will… what’s the term? Fallen in das Wasser?”

“Ins Wasser fallen, literally,” Erik confirmed. “Never trust the weather forecast.”

“Never trust the weather forecast,” Charles echoed absent-mindedly and leaned over to put his bedtime lecture and reading glasses on the nighstand. Then, he shrugged and went to push Erik off his chest so he could slide down onto the mattress. “Bah. I’ll go outside with the kids anyway. We won’t be long, we’ll just get a bit wet in the worst case. Lights out, dearest?”

Sluggishly, Erik snapped the single bedside lamp off, then pulled the curtains with a casual wave before crawling back up Charles’ body to fit his head between his husband’s jaw and shoulder. The stubble on his chin was scratchy and warm and sent a pleasant shiver down Charles’ spine.

“Oh my, we’re tired today, aren’t we?” he asked with a whisper, and got a tangle of _exhaustion-cosy-love-sleep_ shoved at him in response. Yawning, he draped the bedsheets over them both, then closed his eyes and let the darkness pull him under.

_Goodnight, my love._

_Sleep well, Liebling._

The first raindrop fell barely five minutes after Charles’ students had settled around him in the sprouting grass, and it landed square in the middle of his copy of Pride & Prejudice. On Mr Darcy’s oh-so abrupt and inconveniencing appearance at Pemberley Woods, to be exact.

Charles heaved a very small sigh. The irony. Already he could hear the steadily increasing pitter-patter of the rain on the treebranches surrounding them.

“Spring rain!” Bobby exclaimed excitedly and jumped up from where he had been leaning comfortably against his boyfriend’s shoulder. “Look, John, where are your flame roses now?”

However, he seemed to be the only one of the class of teenagers who found joy in the unexpected weather development. Lin was groaning and already draping her denim jacket over her antlers for shelter, John had brought his lighter to safety in his backpocket, and Kitty was phasing, staring miserably at the approaching rain front.

“Professor” came Tabitha’s slightly whiny voice, “can’t we go inside now? Or you could ask Ororo to stop whatever bulls-”

“Language, Ms Smith,” Charles scolded without a real edge. “And I would love to, but unfortunately, Ms Munroe is away in Europe, as you all know, to set up another School there.”

“Oh, what about Azazel? He could ‘port us out of here in no time, or _I_ could,” Illyana perked up, her face making it clear she was contemplating breaking the No-Powers-During-Regular-Class rule if no other actions were taken immediately.

“ _He_ is the one Ms Munroe’s taken to Europe to get around faster. And no, Illyana, no teleporting. We don’t want a repeat of last time.” With what he hoped was a serene smile, he looked at each of his literature students in turn. “We’ll just make our way back to the main building by foot and take the way we came from.”

With an efficiency Charles wished his students would display when doing actual schoolwork, books and pens and worksheets were assembled, then the teenager’s were up on their feet and half-ambling, half-sprinting back to the mansion. Only Lin had stayed behind with Charles, who first had to manoeuvre his wheelchair in the right direction.

“Should I push, Professor?” she asked pleasantly, then shot an early butterfly who was searching shelter under her jacket a distracted smile. “Oh hey there, little one.”

“There’s no need, thank you,” Charles replied, smiling himself and barely swallowing down his pride which, even after so many years, still reared its head at the open mention of his disability every now and then. “In fact, you can go and join the others already and tell them they’re to wait in the classroom. I’ll be fine.”

“Okay Prof!” And with that, she was off, too, skipping over the grass under the steadily increasing downpour.

Meanwhile, Charles was rather beginning to feel like the proverbial drowned rat. Of course, he had thought that his woollen cardigan would be quite enough for this small excursion. Of course, he had not anticipated the lawn getting muddy and harder to navigate when he had sent Lin away.

And of course, he had forgotten Erik’s prediction as soon as he had slipped away into the land of dream.

“Didn’t I tell you? Here, let me give you a lift.” Ah, speak of the devil. Erik had appeared in the air over him, floating there in nothing but his pyjama bottoms and his nightgown (he didn’t have classes this morning and had decided to stay in the study and grade German papers instead of venturing out into the cool spring air), an umbrella held open over his head.

Charles chuckled when his husband’s bare feet touched down on the slippery grass and the tall handsome German strode forward in good-natured exasperation. “You look like Mary Poppins, do you know that?”

“If you want to be saved, you shouldn’t make fun of your saviour, Schatz,” Erik grumbled and smiled as he leaned down, put a hand on Charles’ shoulder and then his lips to Charles’ own.

They kissed like that for a few minutes, with the rain rushing down around them, only the thin baldachin of the umbrella between them and the flood. It was, as far as Charles was concerned, decidedly romantic.

At least until the feeling in his fingertips slowly started to vanish, and the fabric of his cardigan began to cling to him with an uncomfortably cool dampness. “Uh, Erik? Maybe it would really be for the best if we started back to the School now. I’ve got students waiting.”

“Natürlich, mein Liebster,” his husband purred, stole another quick kiss and then finally straightened up, with Charles’ wheelchair detaching from the ground only seconds after. “Look at me, saving you from the wrath of the lawn yet again. What is it with you and getting stuck in flowerbeds?”

“I didn’t get stuck this ti-” Charles started and was quickly silenced by a fingertip on his lips.

“ _But_ you were warned. Yesterday evening. By me, your very own weatherman.” A smug smile slid in place on Erik’s lips as they started towards the mansion, and he held the umbrella high and secure against the wind. “No need to thank me.”

“You’re an utter cock, do you know that?” Charles chuckled and held onto his armrests. But through their link, he sent, _Thank you, darling. Where would I possibly be without you?_

_Still stuck in that flowerbed._

And this time, when Charles gave Erik’s arse a reprimanding slap, they both laughed out loud, and their joy mingled with the rain descending around them in strong, healthy cascades.


	20. A Song for a Son

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 20 - Song 
> 
> Charles and Erik have to return to the School on Graymalkin Lane when someone utterly unexpected enters their lives.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ugh life is tiring lately, so this is a bit late. Enjoy nonetheless, and take care and stay safe out there! 
> 
> Oh btw, this is the lullaby Erik sings, even if his version is probably a bit less fancy: [Wiegenlied composed by Brahms and sung by Dietrich Fischer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dt_R6xOg6Jw).  
> .

The moment Charles closed his laptop with a bit more force than necessary, Erik knew something was wrong.

His husband’s next words were harsh, hurried, spoken with that look in his eyes Charles always got when they were called to the aid of a kid mutant in peril. “Erik. We need to get over the pond, _now_.”

Erik could do nothing but nod mutely and then get up to collect their socks and shoes and jackets which were strewn all over their small Parisian suburbs apartment. If Charles looked like that, and if not even him dimming their psy-link could keep out the cascades of worry and urgency flooding through, it had to be something important. Or rather, someone.

Apparently, it took Azazel five minutes to gather his wits and excuse himself from the construction site that was the European offset of the School a few kilometres from Paris’ city centre (Erik had jokingly suggested they buy the Louvre so their newest education centre would fit in with the other ancient one on Graymalkin Lane, but Charles had just shaken his head fondly and said that even Tony Stark wouldn’t have money enough to do so), and in these five minutes, Charles’ restlessness only grew worse. He wrung his hands. He wouldn’t stop staring out of the window, quietly shaking his head every now and then. And he didn’t give any thanks when Erik, ever the loving and caring husband, nudged him so he could help him into his suit jacket, even though Charles would usually _never_ miss an opportunity to thank him for the smallest, most self-evident things.

Slowly, Charles’ distress began rubbing off on Erik. What could possibly have happened to disturb this usually so collected man this deeply? Who had been hurt by whom, and why was it essential they rush to their aid this very moment?

Erik had grown to trust Charles no matter what (except, of course, when he was in the kitchen baking sweets and Charles got too close to the ingredients) and he had learned not to question every action the other man took. This, however, was something else entirely: Charles was afraid. Insecure, almost.

Finally, Erik couldn’t keep quiet any longer. “What is it? What’s happened? Charles, do I need to be concerned?”

When Charles laughed, it didn’t sound like a laugh at all. For that, it was far too wet a sound. “Oh, Erik. Erik, I need to make a confession, one I didn’t know about either only ten minutes ago. Please don’t be mad.”

“I won’t be.” Hunkering down so he was eye-to-eye with his husband, Erik took Charles’ nervously fidgeting hands in his and squeezed. “You know I never am, not really.”

“You _were_ really mad that one time I ate the hand-made filling for your even more hand-made sufganiyot because I thought it was jam,” Charles whispered, his smile watery and looking like it would slip right off his face and onto the floor if you even so much as glanced at it. Still, he squeezed back, hands warm and grounding.

Erik snorted. “You know we agreed we would never talk about that again, and also, it was an exception. So, what is it? You can tell me. I trust you to have made the right decision with this.”

Charles nodded. The first tear fell, and Erik had to restrain himself from untangling their fingers so he could wipe it away, maybe put his lips to Charles’ cheeks then to kiss away the moisture, taste the salt and what was beneath-

“Erik. I have a son.”

Azazel teleported them from a hazy and mild European spring evening right into a brisk North-American afternoon, with clouds ambling through the steel-blue sky over the School’s main building and the garden slowly burgeoning around it. There were three new faces – two women and one child on the edge of adolescence – stood outside the imposing front doors, flanked by Raven and Ororo. All of them wore equally concerned expressions, safe the lanky boy who had a Star Wars comic propped open in the one hand that didn’t hold onto the handle of his suitcase.

“Alright, sweethearts,” Azazel said and tapped the cap of the chauffeur uniform he had taken to wearing during work, “this is where I leave you to family matters and ‘port all the way back to good old mother Europe. Good luck.”

And before they could bid him goodbye, he had vanished in a puff of grey smoke, leaving the two of them to approach their visitors apprehensively.

_Charles. That woman on the left, the one in the black suit and with the glasses, that’s Moira MacTaggert in the flesh. Or are my eyes playing tricks on me?_

For a moment, Erik felt Charles’ attention deflected from the boy in front of him in favour of their shared mindspace. _Erik, I think you’re correct. She’s grown quite popular since that episode of On Trial Tonight a few years ago, I would know her face anywhere._

Then, they had reached the small gathering, and Ororo was stepping forward, her smile strained with insecurity. “Thank the goddess you’re here. Charles, Erik, this is-”

“Gaby.” Charles’ own smile came quite easy, actually, his eyes sparking up with recognition. “It must have been years. Oh, but where are my manners? Erik, this is Gabrielle Haller, the Israeli ambassador to Great Britain-” Movements suddenly firm and decisive, he reached up and took Erik’s hand, the one with the wedding band gleaming in the high sun, as if he wanted to put some things straight from the start- “Gaby, this is Erik Lehnsherr, my husband and teacher at the School.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Gabrielle Haller said in a husky voice, probably brought on by years of smoking, and offered her hand.

Erik took it, inconspicuously taking in her svelte figure, her hair as dark as Twig’s plumage with a single white streak running through it, her firm and determined handshake. He saw why Charles would be drawn to such a woman, and all of a sudden, he was glad that Charles’ visit to Israel had already been several years ago when he himself had shown up at the School. Because Erik doubted that without some temporal distance, his courtship would have stood a chance against such a short if intensely-lived love affair as there had been between Gaby and Charles. “The pleasure is all mine.”

“And this is Moira MacTaggert, guys,” Raven interrupted their introductions and nodded to the redhead woman in the dapper suit. “She’s the geneticist who’s been arguing for mutants on TV some years ago, plus she runs a mutant research centre off the coast of Scotland _and_ used to work together with the FBI for a while back. Azazel’s been going on about it for hours actually.”

“All correct, lass,” MacTaggert spoke up, that winning smile Erik recognised from that television debate blooming on her lips. “Ah know how tae handle a machine gin an’ all ‘at jazz. Anyway, pleasure tae meet ye all. A’m the doctor of David here.”

“Sweet.” Raven grinned. “I know how to fly a chopper myself. Let’s team up some time.”

“Better don’t, or you might start putting our X-Men to shame,” Erik couldn’t help chiming in, and promptly received a mental jab in the ribs for his efforts. “I mean it, Charles. Emma’s been whining about the decreasing team competence for weeks now.”

“That’s just because she thinks the fact that she’s away to set up the School in Europe and unable to drop by every day because Azazel just can’t teleport an infinite amount of times around half the globe without a strain changes anything within the team. Erik, I know the Squad, and I know they’re under good care with Ororo here.” Charles shot the woman in question a proud smile. “Actually, she’s the best leader we’ve had for a long time now. But anyway, where were we?”

“Charles.” Gaby again, her eyes lowered as she gingerly laid a hand on her son’s shoulder. “I know it’s been years, and I’m sorry I never told you about David- but I need your help now. My work’s never been particularly secure, but in _these_ trying times, I just can’t let my child come to harm. He’s in danger if he stays with me, there have already been terrorist attacks because of what I do, and I believe he would be safer here.”

“Also, his mutation.” Moira tipped a telling finger to her temple. “The lad’s got multiple ones somehow, and they’ve begun tae split up his personality. We don’t know if the process has tae be reversed, but it sure would be stoatin’ if it didne continue. Otherwise- Och, but we can discuss his diagnosis in further detail when we’re inside signin’ him up for yer School.”

The boy – David Haller, going by what Erik had been able to gather – hadn’t looked up all while the adults had been talking. Now, however, his eyes flickered up and met Erik’s for a split second, before going back to flitting over the pages of his comic. Only his fingers cramping tighter around the handle of his suitcase betrayed that he was slowly coming to realise his situation.

Erik frowned. Something was off with the kid’s eyes. And then he remembered their colours: one green, one blue. They were mismatched, a startling addition to the boy’s already curious appearance, what with his lanky limbs and the jet-black hair that wouldn’t stand down no matter how many times Gabrielle Haller ran her motherly hands through it.

“Please,” she said quietly, “Charles, I need you to take him in.”

For a moment, there was only the rustling of the leaves in the spring breeze, and the birds tweeting in the branches. Erik’s gaze slid over to his husband, just to see him watch the boy who was his son with an indecipherable look in his eyes. David kept his firmly glued to the page. For a moment, Erik wished the boy would look up again, just for a second, so he could maybe smile at him. As a promise that everything would be alright.

“Yes,” Charles’ voice finally came, slowly, as if he was waking from a dream. “Of course, I’ll take him, Gaby. Nothing would make me happier. Will you return to England immediately?”

“Scotland, actually. And yes, I’m afraid so, but I have to attend an important conference.” There, her eyes slid over to Moira’s and the two women shared a look that to Erik suggested more than professional ties. “But I’ll make sure to come back over as soon as I’m free and see how my boy has settled in. I’ll try to visit as much as I can.”

“Excellent. Now, David it is, right?” Charles smiled, let go of Erik’s hand and leaned forward to catch the kid’s eye. “Would you like to choose a room to stay? I think we’ll stick with keeping you close in the teachers’ wing at first.”

Mutely, the boy nodded. He didn’t smile back, his expression as serious as if he was taking a test.

 _Poor thing, this must be quite an abrupt change_ , Charles whispered in Erik’s head. _I wish I wasn’t such a stranger to him. Erik, this is my_ son _and I should be comforting him, not taking him away from his mother._ Out loud he said, “Well then, Ororo, Raven, how about you take Miss MacTaggert up to the study already, and I’ll accompany Erik and Gaby with David?”

 _Charles, it’s not your fault. You only heard about him, what, half an hour ago? Going from that, you’re doing fine._ Erik smiled at the kid in what he hoped was a non-threatening way when he picked up one of the two suitcases David had come with, then followed Raven when she pushed the heavy oak doors open. _And you’ve got me. I’ll do anything to help your son._

Charles wheeled alongside his kid when they entered the School’s time-honoured foyer, eyes only on him, his boy, his own blood. “Do you like Star Wars, David?” he asked lowly, his fear of doing something wrong bleeding through to Erik like bitter tea in the morning. _Thank you, my love. I don’t know what I would do without you._

 _It’s only fair._ Erik gave Miss MacTaggert a small wave when Raven and Ororo took her down the corridor to the study, and nodded at Raven’s fingers crossed behind her back. He wasn’t the only concerned for Charles’ newest challenge. _After all, you’ve been the best father I could have ever wished upon my own brood. In fact-_

_In fact?_

_How about we call David by what he is and make him ‘our son’?_

That evening, they put David to bed together.

The kid might have been far too old for that already, what with his twelve years and his withdrawn behaviour, but Charles and Erik agreed he would need something to hold onto in the sudden change that had come over his life: people he could trust, a loving parent, a secure foothold. Also, David himself didn’t seem to object one bit.

In fact, he gave them his first hesitant smile after they had shown him the bathroom and told him he could brush his teeth while they would wait for him in the adjacent piece with the soft, spacious bed. And then, when he came back and slipped under the covers and Erik had the guts to sit down on the edge of the mattress, he wouldn’t take his eyes away from Charles.

“Now, David,” Charles said, smiling, “I hope you will find the School a pleasant place to stay. Your mother will visit as much as possible, you know that, and if there is anything you need tonight – or anytime, really – Erik and I are just in the room three doors to the left. We’ll be here for you.”

Quietly, David nodded and glanced over at Erik, who had the presence of mind to smile and mimic the boy’s nod. “You can wake us if you need anything.”

“Thank you.” And there, the kid smiled back, fingers curling tighter around the covers.

“Good. Now...” Charles trailed off, looking a little lost for all the composure he had shown during the day (which would have actually been their night, and as much as Erik wanted to make sure David settled in well, wanted to make him feel saved and loved as he deserved to be, he longed for their own bed, their own mattress, and Charles’ heart-beat slowing under his ear as they drifted off together).

 _Do you think he thinks he’s too old for a lullaby?_ Erik finally broke the awkward silence vibrating in their psy-link.

The corners of Charles’ mouth curled, and flashes of Erik singing to Lorna and to Pietro in Hebrew when they wouldn’t fall asleep flooded their mindspace, painted in golden pastel. _I don’t know. But you sure have a soothing singing voice. Ask him yourself?_

There was no need to ask. David’s smile had widened ever-so-slightly during their silent exchange, big round eyes flicking between them as if he knew what they were talking about (and he probably did, judging from what Moira had told them about his multiple mutations, telepathy, telekinesis and pyrokinesis among others; in short, an all-in-one package). “Please sing to me,” he finally whispered when Erik looked down at him.

“Would you like something in English?” Erik asked, racking his brain to come up with an appropriate choice in said language. “Or wait, you’re Israeli. I know something in Hebrew, too?”

David shook his head slowly. “No. I know both languages. Sing me something in the language I don’t know, the one in your head with the grey and sharp words.”

 _Oh. He means German_ , Charles chimed in excitedly, wheeling closer. “That is an excellent idea, David. Actually, I myself have never heard him sing in German before. And please, next time you want to read someone’s mind, ask them for permission first.”

Erik had shrunk back at the notion that this little boy, this child had been in his head without leaving a trace, but now, he did his best to smile again. “It’s alright, Charles. He didn’t do much.”

“I’m sorry.” Eyes lowered, the boy traced the patterns on his comforter. “I won’t do it again, Paps.”

“It’s… it’s fine, David,” Erik answered, meeting the wide-eyed stare Charles shot him with one of his own, equally startled, equally confused. _Well, that was fast._

 _Children take to you like ducks to water_ , came Charles’ amusement in his mind, doing a bad job at veiling the concern, the fear, the jealousy beneath. _Now sing, or we will be here the whole night._

Erik nodded and sang.

He went for a short lullaby, one that was barely six lines. His Mama had always sung it to Ruth when she was sick, with Erik sat at his sister’s bedside, holding a cup to her lips slick with fever and listening to every word. Sometimes, they came out so smooth between his mother’s lips, so one with the melody that they sounded like another language entirely. He had never quite stopped believing that for his sister, it had worked better than any other remedy and medicine.

_Guten Abend, gut Nacht Good evening, good night_

_Mit Rosen bedacht With roses covered_

_Mit Näglein besteckt With cloves adorned_

_Schlupf unter die Deck Slip under the covers_

_Morgen früh, wenn Gott will, wirst du wieder geweckt Tomorrow early, if God wills, you will wake again_

_Morgen früh, wenn Gott will, wirst du wieder geweckt Tomorrow early, if God wills, you will wake again_

David’s eyes were drooping by the time he had finished, though it could only have lasted half a minute or so. At his side, Charles was smiling, hands twitching hesitantly with the evident need to touch, to feel, to hold his son’s hand in his own.

“Good night, David,” he whispered, finally resting his fingers lightly on the hand that was clutching the covers tightly, and Erik felt a warmth and hope that wasn’t his invade his senses when their son mumbled back, “Good night, Dad.”

They left him to fall asleep in his new home for the very first time. Erik flicked off the lights, pulled the curtains and then the door shut when they were out in the hall, and once they were in the safe walls of their own quarters, Charles’ warm, strong arms encircled him from behind. He settled back on his husband’s lap willingly, barely suppressing a groan at how good it felt to just be held, to finally rest after a long day full of surprises.

 _Thank you_ , Charles told him, soft lips pressing a soft, drawn-out kiss to Erik’s temple. _You’re the best father for my son, too. If only I had known about him earlier. I shouldn’t have broken ties with Gaby so quickly._

Erik shook his head as far as he could. _Charles. Don’t worry._

_Why shouldn’t I?_

And when Erik said, _Because now you’ve got all the time in the world to be a father to David_ , he felt Charles’ lips smile against his cheek, and hope blossoming all around their minds.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We'll make it through this *hugs* wishing you all the love and luck.


	21. Charles' Pet Fork

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 21 - New 
> 
> When Charles and Erik wake up one fine morning to find their mutations in each other's hands, they have to deal with the difficulties and find the culprit. It pans out to be a family affair, and a fork plays a fairly prominent part in it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I thought Power Swap, what could go wrong?  
> Well, I'm still one whole day behind. Ugh. Anyway, hope you are all healthy and well (:

“Well, this is new,” was the first thing Charles thought of saying when he woke up to the metal bedframe sticking to his forehead.

On his chest came the deep rumble of Erik’s morning voice. “Mhmwhat?”

“Since when do _you_ sleep in?” Charles tried sitting up, to untangle from his husband’s limbs wound around him like some exotic creeper- and drew in a sharp breath. “ _Ouch_.”

He reached around to his lower back with the hand that hadn’t been caught in Erik’s death grip, grabbed the oblong object poking his kidneys, and came face to face with a fork.

Charles Xavier didn’t swear often. Sure, he would use the occasional blasphemous outcry, or embellish his phrases with some nice British vocabulary if he thought the situation called for it, but he tried to refrain from using the real heavy artillery as often as possible.

Today, however, was not one of those days.

“What the fuck? What the bloody blazes- Erik, stop this right now. This joke is _not_ funny.”

The fork glinted innocently at him in the thin ray of sun streaming in from behind their curtains. Erik blinked up at him just as cluelessly, face rumpled from sleep, his otherwise so meticulously well-groomed hair standing up in all directions. A rare sight, really. Charles was usually the one who slept in and had the honour of receiving breakfast in bed and the occasional scrunched nose at his morning breath.

“Charles? Is that you?” Oh, and if Erik’s slight rasp didn’t make Charles’ blood go straight to his lower regions. “Why do you have a cufflink stuck to your collarbone?”

Frowning, Charles grappled for the object in question and scowled as he pulled at it and almost took a bit of his skin off. His dismay only deepened when he noticed the glint of several other metallic objects clinging snugly to his upper body and arms: paperclips, a gold-plated beltbuckle, some buttons and penholders, even that convenient little pocket knife with the USB drive he had been searching for weeks now. “Erik. Really, stop it. I’m serious.”

At first, a pained groan was all he got from his husband. Erik scrunched up his nose (it would have been adorable had Charles not felt annoyance cloud his thoughts), untangled his arms from around Charles’ torso and rubbed his temples. Then, “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but could you _please_ stop giving me that awful headache? It’s making me feel sick.”

Charles sighed. Really, now that Erik mentioned it, he was feeling slightly queasy as well. And off-balance, as if someone was tipping their bed, no, the whole world, this and that way… Gingerly, he finally sat up against the headboard, trying to brush off the advances its metal struts made towards him as he went, and squeezed the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger.

Something felt off.

He only realised what it was when he tried to probe Erik’s thoughts and was met with- silence. Grey walls of nothing all around him, even as he reached out and about and found the confines of his own mind were closed to him, sealing him off from the outside world.

No more minds shimmering brightly around him like candles in the dark. He could feel no one, not his students, not his children, not his teachers.

Oddly, though, there were other sparks suddenly going off all around him. Small ones, bigger ones, in all shapes and colours and textures, some moving, some still-

 _Charles. Why can you feel metal and I can’t?_ suddenly washed over him, accompanied by a wave of nausea, anxiety, surprise, fear; a tangle of emotions so intricate it put Erik’s knitting to shame.

Groaning, Charles concentrated, squinted at the fork- and heaved a deep sigh when it took off from the palm of his hand, wavering, unsteady, but definitely levitating, _all just because of him willing it to_. Its outline lit up in iridescent blue and green against the black canvas of his mind where he would usually watch the flickers that were other people’s thoughts.

“Erik.” Gingerly, he brushed strands of his husband’s hair from his forehead and drew in a hissing breath as his fingers came away wet with sweat. Eyes screwed shut, Erik gripped Charles’ other hand tighter. “Oh, darling. I think we ought to work on your shields.”

For once, they ate breakfast together with the students and supervising teachers in the mess. It was a strategic decision.

“Uh. Hank,” Charles mumbled, hanging his head low as he stirred his oatmeal. At his side, Erik was still looking rather pale, but at least he was keeping his orange juice down.

“One moment...” Their science teacher and provider of countless inventions lifted one furry blue forefinger, placed a marker between the pages of the dusty almanac he had lugged from the library to the breakfast table, then clapped the book shut with a clearly audible thud. Finally, he reached up to push his spectacles back on his nose and face Charles with his amber eyes. “How can I help you, Charles?”

Charles smiled, despite how uneasy he felt in his own skin, with the metal’s drag all around him sending sensation through his body as if he was being pulled apart by the seams. He had met Hank in a college library in New York, both of them working on their promotions: Hank’s first one was to be in biophysics, Charles’ in genetics. After three attempts at awkward flirting, one coffee shop fail (they had learned to laugh together about that day, but sometimes Charles could still feel the burn of embarrassment at spilling his latte macchiato all over Hank’s luscious blue body hair), and one miserable night of Charles drunkenly phoning up Hank and confessing that he was the best friend he had ever had, but that he unfortunately liked the slimmer and maybe a bit less polite boys more, nothing could ever stop their friendship. In the end, they had founded the School together, dragged first Raven on board, then Logan, quickly followed by Ororo and the others. There had been sleepless nights over plans for financing, renovating the mansion, expanding all over the world. Then, Erik had walked into Charles’ life, giving the impetus to founding the X-Men, and from then on, nothing had ever been the same.

True, they had remained close. But time was a luxury, and Charles found himself longing for the old times, when they would pull all-nighters down at the lab, with papers strewn everywhere, with black coffee burning their tongues because they were always too impatient for it to cool off. With the occasional overjoyed hug when they solved an equation, the quiet moments after when they just sat together, smiling the hours away.

If there was a man Charles would put his trust in with solving their situation, it was Hank.

“Erik and I… have a small problem.” At the barely veiled look of disgust Hank sent him, Charles shook his head (at least he thought the scrunching of your nose with simultaneous frowning was disgust, but since he was partially blinded by his lack of telepathy when it came to social cues, he couldn’t be all that sure). “No, nothing of the sexual sort, it’s your lucky day. But do you by any chance still have some of those suppressant bracelets for Anna Marie laying around?”

Two blue furry eyebrows were raised. “Of course, give me five minutes and I’ll go down to the lab and get them. But why would you need them?”

Wordlessly, Charles pulled the collar of his cardigan down to his collarbones.

Hank drew in a long breath. “Is that… a fork sticking to your skin?”

“Woke up with it in my lower back this morning, and it’s been following me around ever since, even though I tried pushing it away. Not even Erik could tell me how to get rid of it.” His spouse gave an affirmative grunt at his side, then sighed and refrained to glare gloomily at his barely nibbled-on toast with strawberry jam. Charles tried not to look too conspirational when leaning in over the table and grinning despite his nausea resurfacing. “I think it’s taken a shine to me. Also, try not to mind-scream too loudly about all the possibilities our situation offers, Erik’s a tad bit sensitive right now.”

For a moment, all Hank seemed able to do was stare. His eyes widened, his jaw went a slightly slack, the heavy tome between his paws almost slipped from the tabletop.

Then, he gave a hearty laugh, turned it into a coughing fit when he drew stares from Emma, Scott and Logan, and leaned in in turn. “Charles, you know me too well. This is… it’s incredible. Amazing. I’ve never heard of a similar thing happening before, and I’m really sorry it’s happened to _you_ of all people, but… I think we three’ll have to cancel our classes today. Tomorrow too, maybe, if we can find a way to work around your unease and maybe keep your powers reversed for a bit longer, but only if it’s not a risk, of-”

Erik moaned quietly, and Charles reached over to squeeze his thigh under the tabletop. “First things first: Hank, it’s Saturday, there’s no need to cancel classes. And second: I can handle metallokinesis, but I don’t think telepathy becomes my husband. As much as I would like to investigate this phenomenon by your side, we should find a solution, quickly.”

His bowl of soggy cereal long forgotten, Hank nodded and got up from the table. “Alright. Perfect. Wonderful. Uh. Charles, you get Erik down to the lab and maybe look to it that he doesn’t throw up all over my running experiments, and I’m just getting a can of black coffee, then I’ll join you. Good?”

“Good.” Charles nodded and pushed his own flavourless breakfast away. He hadn’t been particularly hungry, anyway. “Like in old times?”

Hank’s grin revealed a row of glistening white fangs. “Like in old times.”

Unfortunately, they weren’t able to disguise their slightly unfortunate situation for long. In fact, Charles had to admit he could be partly blamed for it.

“Uncle Charles,” Kurt’s voice piped up behind them as Charles and Erik were waiting in front of the elevator to the underground lab and X-Training rooms, “why do you have a fork floating after you?”

Charles turned, careful not to lose his grip on Erik’s hip, since it seemed to be the only thing holding his husband upright. Raven and Irene’s son was standing there with Desmond Ochoa-Diaz and his older sister Anna Marie, who kept a watchful eye on her kid brother as he sucked at the tip of his tail and gave them an innocent stare out of his golden eyes.

“Yeah,” she said and pointed at the corpus delicti wavering slightly just inches from Charles’ elbow. “Ah saw you take it out of your sweater and put it on the table before you left breakfast, but it just got up and followed you out the door ‘til here. Ah’m sorry, Prof, but Kurtlet and Desmond saw it too and ‘ported after you just as I was grabbing onto them. Hope they’re not bothering you.”

Before Charles could negate this, Desmond piped up, his green locks wavering as he hopped from one foot onto the other excitedly. “Is it a pet fork? Can it talk? Why haven’t you been mind-talking to anyone this morning, and why’s Mr Lehnsherr look so sick?”

The elevator doors gave a ping and slid open, but it was too late. Kurt’s eyes widened even more, so much Charles was afraid they would pop out of their sockets. “Have you and Onkel Erik _swapped powers_?”

The news spread like wildfire after that. And really, what else could you expect from a six-year-old teleporter who was just very excited about a new discovery he had made and which he wanted to share with everyone?

Raven was the first to seek them out in the lab. “What have you two gotten yourself into _this_ time?” were her first words, and hurriedly getting Erik a plastic bucket he could puke into when he doubled over heaving was her first course of action.

Charles winced in sympathy. Erik’s shields were meant to keep telepathy _out_ , not to keep telepathy in, and so he was still slightly projecting his confusion, the queasiness to his stomach, his brain-scrambling headache, despite Charles helping him to strengthen his control first thing in the morning. It was a blessing when Hank finally unearthed the prototypes to Anna Marie’s mutation-suppressant bracelets and locked one of them around Erik’s wrist.

As Charles helped his husband lay down on an examination table and held a cold cloth to his forehead beaded with sweat, the others slowly began trickling in.

Anya came to hold onto her father’s hand and beg him to not die on her, not now that she had finally got that job at the vet just a few villages over and could move out and finally be a perfect young independent lesbian daughter, before she was ushered away by a concerned Ororo. Emma dropped by for a good five minutes, stared at Charles for about half that time as if she thought the loss of his telepathy was nothing more but a prank, and proceeded to make fun of the fork following his every move for the rest of it. Jean, with Logan and Scott in tow, finally was the one to cut to the core of the issue.

“So,” she addressed Hank, who was just taping electrodes to Erik and Charles’ temples, “you want to find out how their mutations function now that they’ve been exchanged?”

“Yep,” he mumbled and scribbled something down into his notebook.

With a distracted smile at Logan, Charles’ eldest daughter leaned back into Scott’s arms locking around her middle. “Well then. And you want to reverse the swap as fast as possible, too, am I right? Without spending more time than is necessary for doing some small experiments, right?”

“Uh.” Hank’s gaze slid over to his two patients. Charles grinned and squeezed Erik’s hand as his husband narrowed his eyes and glared at their doctor. “Um. Yeah, sure. As fast as possible.”

“Good.” Jean smiled and graciously received a peck on the lips from Logan, then craned her neck to hand it on to her other lover. “And for that, the first thing you’ll do is look for the source of the swap.”

It wasn’t a question. It was an uncompromising piece of advice.

Sighing, Hank lowered the syringe he had been about to slide into Charles’ lower arm to take some blood. “And how do you suggest we do that, Jean? It could have been anything. An anomaly in Earth’s magnetic field, psychic interference of some kind. Possibly it could also just have been caused by Charles having a bad dream.”

“Now that,” Charles breathed and batted away the fork that was trying to snuggle up against his side again, “seems _highly unlikely_ to me.”

Erik groaned and bumped his head against the medical cot in frustration. Scott drew in what Charles thought was a sympathetic breath, while Jean frowned, her gaze betraying that she wasn’t quite with them anymore. Only Logan didn’t look all that concerned.

“I think you guys’re just missin’ what’s right in front of ya,” he growled, his arm sliding around Scott’s back to sandwich the taller man between Logan and Jean. “Like, just think. Where do we live?”

“In a really ancient mansion?” Erik suggested weakly, his hand warm and feverish in Charles’ grasp.

“In America?” Scott asked dryly and got a poke in the ribs for it. “Hey. You kiss that better when we’re out of here.”

“In a School full of mutant children, some with powers yet unknown.” Jean’s gaze returned to the present. “Rogue?”

“So far I’ve only ever seen her absorb others’ power, never transmit them to another mutant,” Hank said, shaking his head. “A telepath maybe?”

“What’s a telepath got to do with genetical coding?” Erik groaned and winced as he looked over at Charles. “Could you do that? Shift somebody’s genes until they possess those of a mutant?”

Jean’s eyes held his firmly as Charles frowned yet again. “We work with the mind. With thoughts and memories and maybe nerve centres, electric impulses in the brain. But nothing that palpable.”

Every single one of them startled when the elevator’s display rang and its doors slid open only seconds after.

“Dad?” came a soft, intimated voice. Then, David stepped out onto the smooth tiles of the lab. His lips were pressed into a thin, determined line, and his mismatched ocean eyes twinkled with unshed tears. “I heard what happ- happened. I’m sorry.”

It had been but a mere eleven days since David had been welcomed to the School, and thus into their family. His first night in his new bed, in his new room, in that new environment, had passed without any disturbances.

His second night less so.

Every now and then, Charles was incredibly glad Erik and he did not sleep in various states of undress and instead chose to put on their pyjamas, no matter their previous evening activities. When David slipped under their covers in the middle of the night after his first full day with them, he was once again reminded of this fact.

His ( _their_ ) son had stayed snuggled up between them into the late hours of the morning, not even budging when Erik got up for whatever he did so goddamn early in the day (Charles suspected it had something to do with sport, with sweating and running and outside, though he couldn’t for the life of him understand the appeal of that) and then climbed back into bed showered, with a smile and a tray loaded with breakfast food. When, over scrambled egg and freshly pressed orange juice, Charles had asked for the reason for which David had sought shelter with them, the boy had avoided his gaze and said nothing. Maybe it had been nightmares. Maybe it had just been the daunting prospect of lying awake at night, not another breathing soul around, only the cold and wide and empty universe as company (and don’t we all know that feeling?).

The not-an-answer didn’t really bother Charles further. Dr Moira MacTaggert had told them in what way David was special, and even if he hadn’t known, well, a child would be just that: a child. A young being to be protected, to be taken care of. Not to be broken, or to be pushed beyond what it was comfortable with.

So, they had eaten breakfast with David, let him brush his teeth with them, waited for him in front of Charles’ study after they had readied themselves for the day so they could assign him classes. And David had smiled when he had seen them, Erik tall and proud and with the need to protect and nurture present in every fibre of his body, Charles beside him in the softest cardigan he possessed, the one that was the most suitable for giving long, warm hugs.

Charles felt like anytime his son smiled, somewhere a flower bud opened and bloomed.

Now, though, David wasn’t smiling. He had adopted the quivering lips and the not-meeting-anyone’s-eyes stare he so often wore when he was upset.

Erik was the first to move. On shaky legs, he got up from his medical cot to approach their son and get to his knees in front of the boy, not touching, but not rejecting either. “David. Whatever you did, I’m sure you didn’t do it on purpose. Alles ist gut.”

At his side, Charles could actually _feel_ Hank’s blood pump faster in his veins, from excitement or from fear or from both he did not know. What he knew, though, what he remembered, was a warm, lanky body sliding in between Erik and him the previous night, small hands gripping his gently, the breath of small lungs easing into the deep rhythm of sleep.

And he remembered the dreams.

“David?” At the sound of his voice, the boy looked up, pupils flickering up for a microsecond. “Everything is fine. Just… when you dreamed, did you take us with you?”

It was like a dam broke. David’s small hands fisted into bone-white knots, his body started shaking like a leaf, tears broke forth. Just a child, and oh, did Charles’ heart break for him. Just a child, wielding so much power he did not yet know the extent of.

“I’m suh- sorry! I dreamed- dreamed with you, y-you showed me the powers and said I could try the- them, and when I woke up, I put- put- put your powers the w- wrong way into your bodies!” He doubled over, and only Erik’s quick reflexes kept him from crumbling to the floor. Charles could only watch impassively as his husband took their boy into his arms and started rocking him back and forth, back and forth. Jean was with them in a moment, speaking quietly to Erik, then to David, her expression soft. For a split second, Charles thought about how well she would do as a mother, then Hank’s paw landed heavily on his shoulder.

“Well,” his best friend murmured and tried to pry the fork still stuck to his biceps away, with no success. “Seems we’ve found the first step to a solution here. Did you know your son could warp reality?”

“No.” Charles shook his head, slowly. “But it’s stunning.”

“Augh! Erik, no, get that thing away from me!”

His husband laughed when Charles uselessly flailed after the Fork with his science magazine, then settled for a mock-offended glare. “It can’t hurt you. Not anymore.”

David, sat between them on the blanket in the sprouting spring grass, looked up from his Star Wars comic (a new one his dads had gotten him for his birthday at the start of May, one he liked very much, as Charles had discovered with his restored telepathy) and watched the cutlery in question with silent remorse flaring over his surface thoughts. It had been almost a month since The Incident, as they had taken to call it, and still he was more often than not hesitant to crawl under their covers when he couldn’t sleep.

Charles reached over to poke Erik into his side and got rewarded with a surprised yelp, then turned to their son. “Darling. We don’t blame you, or your powers. It’s perfectly normal to try things out when you’re that age, and actually, it was _you_ who put our mutations back into our bodies. See?” He waved uselessly at the Fork Erik was once again floating just out of his reach, demonstrating how it did not yield one inch to his efforts. “And I’m the mind-reader again, so I can make Erik do this.”

His husband’s eyes went wide as he froze, not a muscle twitching safe what had to be twitching (Charles placed great value on not accidentally putting someone into cardiac arrest). No force but gravity suddenly pulling at it, the Fork clattered to the ground, loosing on of the two googly eyes Kurt had stuck to it as a prank (he still liked to call the darned thing Charles’ pet, and teleported it to places where he knew Charles would the least expect it and, more importantly, be the least happy to be reminded about The Incident, but oh well, kids will be kids).

David nodded slowly. “You’re really not mad at me?” he asked for what had to be the hundredth time, and like all the instances before, Charles was happy to negate with a slight shake of his head and a smile Erik had told him was even softer than the one reserved just for him.

“We’re actually really proud of you for being such an amazing young man,” Erik said as Charles’ grasp on him faded slowly. “And we’re glad of having you as our son.”

They were. Erik’s kids had long moved on, not the cuddly and affectionate children they once were, even though the twins had decided to stay at the School and put their talents to use both as teachers and X-Men. David was their early years all over again, and Charles didn’t have a hard time admitting he had missed that.

“Double hug?” he now asked their son, careful not to startle him with unwanted corporeal contact.

“Double hug,” David agreed, eyes lowered, but the corners of his mouth raised ever so slightly.

Erik leaned in at the same time Charles did, and their lips met briefly just over David’s shock of wild, untamed hair. Then, their son’s thin arms were around Charles’ neck, grasping tightly, with Erik’s arms wrapping around both of them, holding them in the warm spring sun that burned almost as bright as David’s unruly joy between them.


	22. That's All I Ask of You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 22 - Promise 
> 
> Jean wants to take Scott and Logan to watch The Phantom of the Opera. Charles and Erik decide to tag along and find the time and place to renew their vows inconspicuously.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Literally don't know what this is supposed to be, but I liked writing it. Fun fact no. 1: Jean and Scott did indeed go to watch The Phantom of the Opera together, once upon a time in comic!verse. Fun fact no. 2: Scott's car from X2 has a [fandom wiki](https://xmenmovies.fandom.com/wiki/Cyclops%27_Car).  
> dedicated to it.  
> Also, here's link to the song I borrowed the not-so-correct quotes and the chapter title from: [All I Ask Of You (Reprise) composed by Andrew Lloyd Webber](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7Eu5ZupD0c).  
> 

“Oh.” 

“Oh?” Charles lowered his cup of tea and looked up to where Jean was sitting beside him in the glaring July sun. 

“Dad. _Dad_. Look,” she said with excitement making her voice quiver, and levitated the magazine she had been reading over to him, with the advertisements’ page open. “Can we go there? We _have_ to go there, Scott and I have wanted to go watch just that with Logan for ages now.” 

_Just that_ seemed to be a poster  in mysteriously gloomy colours  covering the whole page, proclaiming that the following year, The Phantom of the Opera would be played in a fairly well-known musical theatre in the heart of New York City. Charles frowned. 

“Isn’t that the one where the villain’s name is Erik?” He side-eyed his adoptive daughter. She, however, was all distracted smiles and expectation. 

“Yes. His ways might not be the most moral, but deep down he’s just another misunderstood lover.” Green eyes sparkling, Jean pulled the wrought-iron chair she always sat in when they were eating lunch outside closer to Charles, so she could look over his shoulder. “Logan says he’s not so much one for culture, but he’ll appreciate it. The polyamorous energy between Raoul and Christine and Erik is strong, and the music is nice. Please, Dad, we have to get tickets now, or they’ll be gone!” 

“Tickets? Already?” The running time ranged from January to May, and it was barely August yet. “For spring? That would be on a school night, I don’t know if we can make time-” 

“For spring.” Jean snaked her arms around him from behind and gave him one of her crushing You’re-The-Best-Dad-Ever hugs. “Please? You and Erik can come, too, and we’ll give you a lift?” 

Heaving a sigh, Charles leaned back into her embrace and closed his eyes to let the summer sun paint flickering pictures of red and orange on the canvas behind his lids. Logan might not have been one for culture, but Erik sure was. He loved reading classics together in bed, wouldn’t say no to the occasional visit to the museum and  had even once purchased tickets to go to the theatre (the Dreigroschenoper, a German classic, and it had been wonderful to listen to it through Erik’s ears and understand the meaning behind the otherwise so harsh and double-edged words of Erik’s native language). 

As it was, they barely ever got out anymore. 

Jean’ s lips widened into a smile when the tendrils of her power entwined with Charles’ thoughts  picked up his strengthening resolve. “Thank you, Dad. I promise, we won’t drink and the bags under our eyes won’t scare the students away in the morning. I know how to get my boys to behave.” 

“Fine by me then. But,” Charles spoke up and shot his daughter a sly grin, “we might as well treat ourselves. Let’s go out to a fancy dinner and drink champagne before the play starts.” 

And just that they wound up doing. 

Scott drove them in his newest baby, a shiny black Mazda RX8 with a purring engine Charles knew Erik enjoyed beyond belief. At the restaurant they had chosen, the food was divine, and so was the sparkling wine they enjoyed just before the curtain rose and Webber’s melodies drew them into a story of tragic love and unyielding loneliness. Charles had looked to it that they had a box all to themselves, so Logan could yawn every now and then without attracting offended stares, only teasing from Jean’s side and sneaky pecks on the lips from Scott. 

“Young people,” Erik murmured once, right before the Phantom sent the chandelier down onto the stage, “just look at the three of them flirt the time away.”

Charles lightly knocked his chin against his husband’s head where he had rested it on his shoulder. “You are one to talk. Don’t think I haven’t noticed you breathing down my neck the whole evening. You’re not thinking about taking things further once we’re home instead of going straight to bed as we responsible teachers should, or are you?”

When he peered down, Erik’s lips were pulled back into a distracted pout. “You just look ravishing in that charcoal suit, Schatz. I’m a simple man.”

On stage, the protagonists were flying into a frenzy, the Phantom’s vengeful voice booming through the theatre that it made everyone’s bones clatter. Humming, eyes straight ahead, Charles felt his way up Erik’s thigh, over his chest and finally under his chin, where he knew a sensitive spot that would make his husband purr if tickled right was hidden. “Same goes for you, darling. Slate grey brings out your wonderful eyes, and that magenta tie is a bold if admirable choice of accessoire.” As predicted, Erik leaned into the touch, soft noises of content escaping with his breaths. “God, we should do this more often.”

“Dress up in suits?”

“That and dinner. Going out, doing something fancy. I heard you’re not disinclined to concertos on the piano?”

Erik’s long, deft fingers wound around Charles’ thigh. “Not at all, shame only their audience has to get their finger practice elsewhere. Promise we’ll do this more often, then?”

“Promise.” His breath hitching, Charles side-eyed the couple of three to their right, who fortunately were entirely engrossed in the spectacle the musical actors were building before their eyes, so captured they didn’t pay attention to Erik’s indecent advances. “We’re nearing old age – well, mid-forties, let’s consider that old age –, I think we deserve the occasional night out. I can’t wait to spend the rest of my life like that, just you dressed up all dapper and dashing and handsome, nice wine, good music. Never could I have wished for more.”

On stage, the Phantom’s Punjab lasso closed around Raoul’s throat, and Christine sank to her knees, hands outstretched in powerless betrayal. Erik looked away, buried his nose in the juncture between Charles’ collarbone and neck, and breathed out, so silent the words almost dissolved before they reached the only auditor’s ear, “ _Promise me that all you say is true_.”

Charles raked his brain for the right lyrics, and found he had forgotten but one line of the song they had been listening to just one hour ago. _Say you’ll share with me each night, each morning._

“ _Love me_ ,” Erik sing-songed back quietly.

The music swelled. Charles’ next words went almost unheard. “ _I do_.”

Christine bent down to capture the Phantom’s lips in a kiss, not pitying, not pleading, just what it was: a simple gesture of devotion. It ended at the same time as Charles and Erik finished their small duet of “ _Love me. That’s all I ask of you_.” and leaned back, eyes locked, hearts warm and heavy with the knowledge that no matter their time left on Earth, they would make it count; make it count hand in hand, and with all they had.


	23. It's a Harley Davidson, Not a Yamaha, Father.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 23 - Friends 
> 
> The School receives an unannounced visitor, Logan becomes a father, and Anya finally gets a good flirt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just wanted to bring a certain someone into this so I could ship a certain ship xD the prompt word... had to suffer a bit for that, but yeah. Enjoy!

Charles was just pouring Emma her second glass of rosé wine when the rumbling of an engine up the driveway made everyone assembled in the Common Room fall still.

Erik looked up from where he had been listening to Pietro blabber on about his latest purchase of high-quality stereo in-ear headphones. Logan untangled himself from where he was lounging on the couch with Jean and Scott flipping through brochures for party equipment, and Raven frowned out the window into the darkening March evening, her interrogation of Irene for the weather on the day of spring equinox forgotten.

“Everyone,” she spoke up after the roaring of the machine outside had cut off, “either one of our students just got themselves a motorcycle without informing us, or we have an unannounced visitor.”

Erik glanced over at Charles, sending him one of those Your-Mutation-Is-A-Major-Turn-On-In-Bed-But-Now-Would-Be-A-Good-Time-To-Put-It-To-A-Better-Use looks. However, Jean was faster.

One finger to her temple, a crutch Charles had taught her and which she had never quite broken the habit of, she squinted. “I don’t know… _her_. Oh, and I’m not sure I want to. Those are some unpleasant memories. Definitely a mutant, too, but I’m not so sure if we should call her a visitor or a threat. She’s currently hesitating to ring the doorbell.”

A glint to Charles’ left caught his eye, and when he looked over, Emma’s skin had frosted over with diamond, and the psy-link they had used only moments ago to talk about the food option for their small spring equinox gathering he found harshly severed. “A government rat?” the woman hissed, prompting Ororo’s eyes to cloud over shock white in turn.

“We’re not defenceless.” Hank’s turn to speak, his relaxed pose from where he had been bending over a table to study the rough draft of the guest list replaced with determined tension. “Together, we are strong. If she’s come to do harm to our School and anyone in it, she should have brought enforcements.”

At the far side of the room, Irene sat and smiled, the fur of an ageing Bumblebee curled around her fingers as she stroked the cat. Nothing to fear, then.

Charles raised his voice, drawing the attention of everyone in the room. “Threat or not, we should go out and welcome her accordingly. Erik, a third person, and me.” He stapled his fingers under his chin. “Who wants to volunteer?”

Pietro had raised his hand in a whoosh, but Jean’s lips twisted in a bizarre mix of anticipation and glee. “I think,” she murmured and took her hand from where it had been resting on Logan’s thigh, “ _you_ should go, James.”

Laura Kinney was no ordinary young woman (of course, no young woman is ever truly ordinary, but by society’s standards, Laura definitely did not fall within the bounds of averageness).

For one, there were the metal claws that had protruded from her knuckles at the sight of Logan stepping out of the School behind Charles and Erik. The latter had pushed a quick observation at Charles, which consisted of the fact that he had encountered the metal glinting on those claws only twice before – upon meeting Logan, and during a covered visit to one of the FBI’s mutant experimentation centres – and that it had been grafted onto the girl’s skeleton in a most probably torturous procedure, which might have been one of the reasons she was in such a bad mood.

Charles hadn’t even had time to open his mouth and spew an appeasing greeting before the sound of the Wolverine’s claws unsheathing wetly through parting skin had reached his ears, and the stout man in question had stepped forward, in front of them, shoulders squared in a defensive stance and audibly sniffing the air.

“Friends,” his voice had rumbled, deep with warning, “ _this_ is a family affair.” Then, his flaming gaze had turned back upon their unexpected visitor and her beefed-up vehicle parked arbitrarily in the gravelled courtyard. “Nice machine, kiddo. Looks like you know how t’ take care of your Yamaha.”

Even in her torn jeans and washed-out plaid and with her dark hair hanging limp around her face, the young woman had looked no less threatening, in a tear-your-guts-out-and-feed-them-to-the-pigeons way. Of course, they had nothing to fear, but Charles’ hand had nonetheless gone to Erik’s and squeezed reassuringly as she had snarled, “Thank you. But it’s a Harley Davidson… _father._ ”

Now, Laura was sitting in the coldly illuminated kitchen refuelling on cereal and orange juice, while Ororo hovered in the doorway and Logan leaned against the counter, nursing a beer and not daring to take his eyes of his daughter. Charles, sat with Erik and a cup of tea by the window with the night glaring in from behind it, watched the going-ons with interest.

The young woman had been allowed to push her motorcycle into the garage to the School’s own cars and bikes, and had kept a watchful eye on it until Erik had clicked the lock shut and they had proceeded to escort her in. Judging from the messy enthusiasm with which she was ploughing through the milk and sugary choco crunch, she couldn’t wait to get back to it. In a way, she reminded Charles very much of the way Logan had behaved when he had first met him, in that gas-station’s tiny diner back in the days when Hank and he still used to go on roadtrips to gather together their mutant students. Both hunter and hunting, their Canadian acquaintance, then friend, had remained vigilant round the clock, as if he felt the world just had it out for him. It was not only his mutation that made him more animal than human at times, really.

Well, apparently, the apple never falls far from the tree.

Emma’s heels clicking on the parquet announced her arrival from a few halls down, and when she finally strode into the kitchen in all her glittering glory, a look of determination had engraved itself in her brows.

“So,” she addressed Laura and bent down so she could brace herself on the table – directly in the girl’s line of vision if only she would look up –, “to what do we owe the honour? We’re a relatively covert institution here, for our students’ sake, and I would like to know how you found us.”

Laura snorted, and without looking up, she growled between two bites, “Friends.”

“These _friends_...” Emma leaned down farther, putting her décolleté on precarious display. “Are their innards still where they’re supposed to be, or were you in the mood to sharpen your claws a little?”

A pained look flitted over the girl’s face just before she wiped her mouth on her sleeve and looked up to meet Emma’s eyes with a glare of her own. For a split second, Charles thought he had only imagined it, but then the images started flooding in.

_People with guns. People without guns, but with pretty words and promises. People putting shackles on her, and pushing her face in the dirt, together with her trust._

_Shards of bones jutting from torn skin, broken eyes gazing up into the steel-blue sky. Some of them she had wanted to break. Some not._

_Blood congealing on glinting blades in black clots._

“You’re lucky I sharpened my claws on them.” The women’s noses were almost touching with how far Laura was leaning up, the blades in her forearms already denting her knuckles. “Or I would have sharpened them on _you_ , sparkly lady.”

“I think she might have misunderstood the meaning of the word ‘friends’,” Erik mumbled into Charles’ ear as they watched the situation escalate, with Logan throwing himself between a bristling Emma and a snarling Laura, and Ororo starting forward, undecided between grabbing one of the two Wolverine’s by the scruff or their obviously overprotective counsellor.

Charles watched the chaos unfold and cringed at the claw-shaped gashes appearing on the wooden cabinets over the counter. Oh well. He knew his people to be competent and apt to sort themselves out, and he also knew John and Bobby wouldn’t be averse to spending some boyfriends’ quality time together while renovating the kitchen. Laura Kinney could be handled.

“Maybe,” he whispered back and snatched Erik’s cup to drink the last sip of tea his husband always left over, “we can reintroduce her to it, if she chooses to stay. We could even acquaint herself with a new piece of vocabulary.”

“And what would that be?” Erik abandoned his perch against the windowsill in favour of Charles’ lap while the tussle beyond the kitchen table slowly abated to a heated argument.

Arms locking around his husband’s waist from behind, Charles smiled and drew in the scent of Erik’s aftershave. " _F_ _amily_.”

Laura stayed.

She took the room right beside Charles and Erik’s quarters, because it was on the ground floor and its window opened closest to the garage. When Charles offered to pay her tuition fees to be schooled as a teacher, she declined with a half-smile, offering that she could look after the grounds and the buildings, since she knew how to wield a hammer or a spate, and added that if she were to take that job, her father could devote the time in which he didn’t teach history to teaching arts, instead of kneeling in a flowerbed or repairing a dripping tap even though his true passion didn’t lay there.

Of course, Charles agreed, and Erik drew up the labour contract and set it in front of Laura on the study’s table. She signed, commenting that she didn’t even have papers on her name and, from a bureaucratic point of view, only existed in the lab reports of her creators.

Erik’s answer was a simple one: “To us, you’re a very real person, and that’s all that matters.”

On the afternoon of the School’s small but not less exciting Spring Equinox Celebration, Charles was watching Laura and Logan set up the make-shift stage for Allison’s performance when Anya’s bicycle came barrelling down the driveway.

His daughter, now a skilled veterinarian in a clinic just a few hamlets over, jumped off her two-wheeled steed as soon as she reached hearing distance, bunched up her skirts and dashed over the gravel to throw her arms around Charles’ neck in a crushing hug. “Dad! Jeez, it’s been ages since I’ve last visited you here! How’s Paps? And Bee, and Raven, and Ororo’s Garden?”

“Woah, steady, steady,” Charles chuckles and hugged back, as tight as he could muster without getting them both off-balance. “Everybody’s fine, your father is thriving, so are the plants, and Bee’s getting old in her bones, but she still screams as loud when she doesn’t get fed in time. It’s lovely to see you, too.”

“I’m so glad I could come,” Anya gasped and straightened back up, pushing some of her auburn hair behind her ears as she reached into her satchel and showed Charles the edge of a plastic packaging. “I brought what I need to check up on all your strays – the non-human ones, obviously –, how much time left before dinner and then dancing?”

From the corners of his eyes, Charles spotted Laura watching them from where she had abandoned the mic cable roll she was carrying around. There was unveiled interest expressed in the curve of her arms crossed in front of her chest, with the sleeves of her plaid rolled up, and her eyes sparkling as she took in Anya’s figure.

“Dad?” Instinctively, Anya’s gaze followed his, and then she gaped as she saw Logan’s daughter standing there in the sprouting grass, with the spring sun shining down bright and warm on her face. “Is that a new teacher? I’ve never seen her around before!”

“Not a teacher. She’s our gardener and mechanic and carpenter and whatnot. I think you’ll like her once you get to know her. But now,” Charles said and grabbed a hold of his wheels to start manoeuvring inside, “you should come take a look at the puppies Kurt dragged in yesterday. And then you’ve still got three whole hours to look at our other dogs and cats, yes?”

“Yes,” his daughter answered, but as they passed over the School’s doorsill and disappeared into its shadowed halls, Charles knew her eyes were glued to Laura’s until the last second.

“Is that Logan’s daughter getting mine another drink?” Erik mumbled five hours later, eyes drawn into slits.

Charles peered over to the bar, between the legs of the dancing and chattering body of teachers and of-age students. “I do think so? Is that- Yes, that’s her flannel, I’ve seen her wear it before.”

His husband chuckled and threw back the last of his beer, before he slid down and onto Charles’ lap (his absolute favourite place to be, Charles knew from over ten years of marriage). “When you were talking about showing ‘family’ to Laura, were you really thinking of matching her up with our Anya?”

“Well...” Charles drew out the word like hot cheese, caressing Erik’s thigh in small circles. “It’s not like it’s a bad thing. She’s been whining about not finding a wife for years now.”

Behind them on the stage, Allison’s voice rose with vibrato, making an aurora borealis dance over the cheering crowd. Jubilee was snapping picture after picture from the sidelines, and somewhere in the depths of the mansion, Charles was aware of David’s presence, their son peering out of his bedroom window and delighting at the array of colours painting the night sky as a flourishing tableau.

“Yes,” came Erik’s agreement in a deep rumble after Allison’s song had ebbed off again. “Young people. Let them have their fun.”

Across the dance floor, Anya’s mind was going bright with the excitement of a flirt, Laura’s own thoughts reeling right beside her. “Indeed,” Charles breathed happily. Erik’s back was warm and firm against his chest, and his middle was just a tad bit soft when he poked it playfully. “Let them have their fun. I’m just glad we could show Laura more than friendship.”

“So am I.” Erik squirmed around on his lap, grabbed Charles’ chin and then their lips met, tasting of liquor and the fresh spring air. When they parted, his husband was flushed, and Charles was sure he did not look any less dishevelled. “So am I.”


	24. Drink In the Moonlight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 24 - Moonlight 
> 
> Charles and Erik share a quiet moment and more in the solitude of a moonlit night.

Erik was woken by a Charles-shaped void in his dreams, and almost suffered a stroke when he found the same absence beside him on the mattress.

With a grunt, he untangled himself from where he had obviously replaced Charles with the bedsheets and sat up against the headboard, blinking into the darkness. Charles’ side of the bed was still warm, he couldn’t have been gone for long. From outside, only the whispering of the tree branches penetrated the room.

The curtains were ajar, and there was a sliver of the purest moonlight filtering through the crack. It was bathing parts of the room in strange shapes and slanting shadows, and then, Erik saw that one of those shadow-shapes was moving slightly.

“Charles?” he croaked and stumbled out of bed, dragging the quilted comforter with him as he went.

The shadows quivered as Charles turned around to face him, sat in front of the window in his wheelchair and pyjamas, his smile veiled in darkness and light. “Erik, darling. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you.”

Erik cleared his throat, then asked, “What are you doing up? It’s not even getting lighter yet.” On quiet feet, he walked over to his husband, shivering when tendrils of the carpet snagged at his toes and the comforter he had slung over his shoulders whispered against his bare thighs. French nights weren’t all that warm in March.

“I just… woke up, a few minutes ago. I think it might be because of the moon. It’s full, do you see?” Charles looked out the window again and pulled the curtains back a few inches more.

Erik came to a halt at his left shoulder and bent down to peer out as well.

And indeed, the grounds of the School’s European offset near Paris were a sight to behold in the light of the moon. The lawn interspersed with the first blossoming wildflowers shimmered as though it was made of glass and crystal, all jagged edges and dimmed shadows, and the trees not far from the building’s ivy-overgrown walls moved like creatures out of fairy tales, with wings, fangs, eyes that closed and opened relentlessly.

“Don’t tell me you’re turning into a werewolf. I’m not sure I’m into that kind of secondary mutation.”

“Erik,” Charles gasped poked the man in question in the ribs, grinning when Erik curled away with a smothered yelp. “No, thank you. I believe I’m just fine with leaving this to Rahne.”

Erik harrumphed, then pulled the curtains back all the way and perched on the windowsill, snuggling deeper into the comforter. “Alright. You’re starting to suffer from senile… senile Bettflucht, um, senile bed escape, then. That's what we say in German when you get old and always wake up early.”

“Hmm,” Charles hummed, his sky eyes almost translucent in the shimmer of the moon. _Don’t be ridiculous, love. We’re barely fifty yet._

Erik shrugged and leaned his head back against the cold glass of the window. Beyond it, he thought he could see waves of light streaming down from the moon, enveloping Earth in a silver veil silencing all cities and minds, like snowfall in winter. When he propped up first one foot on Charles’ lap, then the second, he didn’t have to wait long until his husband’s sturdy fingers came down to envelop them, knead them, almost searing after the coolness of the parquet.

“The moon in France doesn’t look any different from the one at home,” Charles remarked quietly after they had sat like that for what felt like one small eternity of companionable silence. “I saw a daisy today, on the lawn in front of the cafeteria’s porch. They say that as soon as the daisies bloom, spring has truly arrived.”

“Mama always said the same thing,” Erik agreed, voice low and husky from the occasional frisson Charles’ deft fingers working on his sole and around his toes sent up his spine. “She also told me that even though daisies usually close their petals at night, they stay open on one with a full moon. To drink in the moonlight.”

“Is it true?” Charles’ eyes were wide with wonder, iridescent in the light flickering over his features.

“I don’t know. I don’t... _remember_ if she was making things up or not. I don’t _know_.” And from one moment to another, behind his lowered eyelids, Erik could feel tears threatening to spill over his lashes. When he swallowed, it hurt, and his chest felt suddenly very tight, like there was a black hole between his ribs voiding him from inside out. “But _Mama_ told me-”

Then, his voice left him, and Charles’ own sorrow and yearning mingled with his until there was no more distinguishing what either of them truly felt. “Erik,” came Charles’ voice, carefully prodding and intimate, “shall we go back to bed, love? I think I’ll be able to fall back asleep now.”

He nodded and let himself be guided over to the edge of the mattress, throat clogged up as he watched Charles transfer himself from his wheelchair to his side. Finally, they were back under the covers, enclosed in the soft warmth of the linen, and he could curl over into his husband’s arms, appreciating how Charles pretended not to notice the wetness leaking onto his shoulder, or the silent quivering of his chest.

Only a few months ago, Edie Lehnsherr had died at the ripe age of seventy-three, in her sleep, after three days of complaining about small headaches.

 _There was nothing you could have done, dearest_ , Charles told him, put his hand between Erik’s shoulder blades and his lips to his husband's cheek. _You couldn’t have known, and she couldn’t have known either._

Erik didn’t answer. He knew his emotions to be irrational, but when it comes to the death of a loved one, when can you ever be rational? So, he just held on in turn, breathed in and out and in and out, and let the cool moonlight wash over them both.

Just before sleep pulled them under, Charles asked with silent warmth, _Are we leaving_ _the curtains open?_

And Erik nodded gently against his chest. _Yes. The moon may not be any different from the one at home. But he always likes company._

Charles agreed, and then the silver light petered out as Erik’s eyelids fell closed and there was nothing but his most beloved’s embrace and their minds, entwined in both sorrow and joy.


	25. Just Two Lab Rats and Their Cook

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 25 - Favourites 
> 
> Rahne seeks Mr Lehnsherr out for a torn pair of socks and ends up helping him in the kitchen. When Charles Xavier joins them, she also accepts a very important task.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally caught up with writing! Also, there's quite a time jump in this chapter - our mutants in love are getting old - so consider them slowly morphing into the Sirs from the Original Trilogy.

“I’m suh-sorry, Mr Lehnsherr,” Rahne heard herself blubber, “and they we-were my favourites, too.”

Mr Lehnsherr quickly wiped off his sugar-coated hands on his apron before squatting down in front of her and taking the soaked red-and-orange striped socks from her hands. He got mud on his fingers, which probably wasn’t that hygen- hygian- _hygienic_ , considering he was making sweets in the School’s kitchen, but he didn’t look guilty or upset or even angry, not even a wee bit.

Instead, he gave her a genuine smile, the one with his crow’s feet deepening, and with his lips pulling back to show his numerous teeth, almost as spiky as her own. In the hazy afternoon light streaming in through the kitchen windows, his whitening hair shimmered golden, and despite her apprehension, Rahne could feel her heartbeat slow and her blood flow more calmly through her veins.

“It’s alright, Rahne,” her German teacher told her, his steel eyes flickering down to look at the mess which had once been the woollen socks he had finished knitting for her only this winter. “I can knit you new ones, if you tell me what colour you want them in. And I can even get a more stable thread if you would like, so they don’t tear the next time you… do whatever you did with them.”

“I...” The memories of last night clawed their way to the front of her mind, and she could feel her voice growing fainter again, her eyes sting with unshed tears. “I was only going for a walk.”

A _walk_ . A _lie_. Back in the Highlands, this would have earned her a beating with the belt from Reverend Craig, a well-deserved one too, because you didn’t bite the hand that fed. You told the truth, and begged for mercy and forgiveness through every drop of blood spilled, and you said that you wouldn’t do it again, never evereverever.

But Rahne knew that this would be a lie, too. She would do it again. And again, and again. Because it just felt so good, to climb out the window, feel her skin and bones and tendons stretch as she shifted from human to lupine, revel in the way the ground gave under her paws when she let herself drop onto the grass. The shadows of the night flitting by her as she ran, the air thick with a thousand scents she could have spent hours stalking, the first spring blossoms tickling her nose as she listened to the essence of the gloomy darkness, spotted with the cry of nocturnal birds and the moans of everyone in the School fast asleep.

Deep in her guts, where her primal instinct reared its head, she _knew_ that she would never, could never give up the thrill of the chase.

“Rahne,” Mr Lehnsherr’s voice tore her from her reverie, and she found herself hunching over in anticipation of a blow, maybe the back of a hand connecting with her cheek. Then, he continued, “It’s alright if you want to get out in the night. Just make sure that you get enough sleep, and that you don’t get too close to the road, yes?”

She looked up, and at his eyes interlocking with hers, the easy way he held her shrivelled socks like their miserable state didn’t matter in the least, she felt her shoulders unknot, her perked ears lower. Silently, she sent a prayer to the heavens, thanking God and the good Doctor Moira MacTaggert for sending her here, to this safe place, where no one sought to harm her for her sins.

Still smiling, Mr Lehnsherr straightened up, threw the socks in the rubbish bin without a second glance and turned on the tap to scrub the dirt from under his fingernails. “Now, Rahne, do you have some free time on your hands? Because I need someone who can help me with forming the last macaroons and then finishing off the matzo. And I assure you you’ll get paid well: Consider yourself a lab rat for trying the end results.”

Before Rahne could nod enthusiastically and lean up to the sink to wash her own hands, too, a voice rang clear and velvety from the open doorway.

“Need another pair of hands? I gladly volunteer for the lab rat part.” The Professor pushed his wheelchair over the kitchen sill, clad in a pair of khakis and the baby blue cardigan Rahne always saw him wear when he was feeling comfortable, and smiled at the two of them. “Good afternoon, Rahne. When you were outside last night, did you feel spring approaching?”

“Good afternoon, Professor Xavier.” Rahne straightened up and automatically smoothed her short ginger hair back behind her ears at the sight of the man who had so kindly taken her in when Moira had come knocking at his door. “Yes, ah found the first daffodil open in Ororo’s Garden, an’ there’s bear’s garlic growin’ in the beech grove already. But I’ll bide inside from now on if ye don’t want me outside.”

Professor Xavier went to shake his head, his warm and safe thoughts already reaching out to her in an encouragement to hone her powers whenever she saw fit, when Mr Lehnsherr pointed an accusing finger at his husband, eyes narrowed to slits. “You! Don’t come any closer, or you’ll put our Passover desserts in jeopardy.”

Eyes wide and innocent, the Professor raised his hands. “Why, Erik, my love, you _know_ that rugelach are my favourites, and that I won’t touch your creations because I very much value my life over some sweets. Even if they were made by you.”

“Hrmpf.” Glowering still, Mr Lehnsherr turned to Rahne. “Rahne. I have a very important task for you. Are you up to it?”

She nodded, hating that whenever she was spoken to, her hands automatically came together to pick at her nail beds. Why could she not grow up to be a confident, strong woman, like Anya Lehnsherr and her girlfriend, or like Ororo Munroe, the new headmaster?

“Good. I want you-” There, Mr Lehnsherr made a dramatic pause, straightening up to his full height – despite his back pains the whole School knew about – and glaring at the grin Professor Xavier shot him- “to keep an eye on _this man_ and make sure he keeps his hands _off_ my ingredients. Especially the sweet ones.”

“Will do, sir,” Rahne said, proud of the fact that her voice was only barely trembling.

“Good grief.” Chuckling, the Professor raked a hand through his thinning auburn hair and wheeled farther into the kitchen, to Rahne’s side. “The security measures here are stricter than at the airport.”

“With good reason,” Mr Lehnsherr quipped back, the twitching in his cheeks betraying his amusement at the situation. “Now, make yourself useful, or do you enjoy retirement so much you won’t even help your poor old husband in the kitchen anymore?”

Drawing in a dramatic gasp, Professor Xavier launched into a lengthy answer about how his retirement was hard-earned, now that he was well past fifty, and that in fact, he wasn’t even retired yet _at all_ , that he had just put Ms Munroe in charge of the School so he could focus on other projects benefiting mutants all over the world, etc., etc.. From Mr Lehnsherr’s fond smile, Rahne could deduce that he had heard it all a hundred times already, and that he wouldn’t mind hearing it again, and again, and again.

Sometimes, she wished to find even a fraction of the love so deep and boundless that united Mr Lehnsherr and the Professor. And then, she remembered that just these two men were amongst the people who had given her the freedom to aspire to her own goals, to be her own woman. For that, she found, she could indeed love them without boundaries.

That afternoon, Mr Lehnsherr finished off the macaroons and the matzo for Passover the next week, and with the help of his two devoted assistants, he even got to wash and cut the potatoes for Sunday’s lunch. Rahne was let off the hook around dinner time, successfully having deterred Professor Xavier from channelling off Mr Lehnsherr’s ingredients and trying more sweets than he was allowed as a lab rat, and the last thing she saw before she turned the corner of the kitchen corridor were the two long-suffering lovers bickering on, smiling like they did not have a care in the world, with the Professor’s hand resting on his husband’s hip so easily that it was as if it had belonged there since the beginning of time.

With a shy smile on her own, she turned and walked away, relishing in the warmth the afternoon spent in the couple’s company had stirred up between her rips.

She couldn’t wait to go out that night, be her true, her lupine self- and live and love as freely as they had done all their life.


	26. Under the Sakura

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 26 - Picnic 
> 
> A visit to Japan brings clouds of cherry blossoms and headmistress Kwannon's pleasant company.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so confused by The-Psylocke-Who-Is-Not-Betsy-Braddock's numerous names, so I just went with Kwannon (: enjoy!

To Charles, the most fascinating thing about Japan – besides the mutant children residing there – were the blooming cherry trees.

“Welcome to the Japanese Academy for the Gifted, Professor Xavier,” Kwannon spoke when the last wisps of smoke the use of Kurt’s powers brought with them had been dispersed by the light breeze. Then, she turned to Erik, bowed slightly, and held his gaze without twitching an eyelid when she straightened back up. “And Mr Lehnsherr. Please, follow me.”

Kurt in their middle gave the headmistress a small wave with his odd hands, his smile insecure and sweet, but she had already turned and was heading for a screen door separating the courtyard they had appeared in from the halls of the School’s Japanese offset. Dejected, the young man slumped in on himself.

“Goodbye, Kurt.” Erik gave in and clapped his nephew on the shoulder, and Charles followed suit.

“Have a lovely day, Kurt, and thank you for taking us all this way. We are so very proud of you,” he added to his husband’s words, underlining them with a slight smile.

Just as quickly as they had vanished, Kurt’s dimples reappeared, and right before the boy himself returned to the School on American soil in a cloud of purplish-blue smoke and with the rushing of displaced air, he chirped, “Goodbye, uncles! Have a good time.”

And though the by-product of his mutation made Charles’ eyes water, he smiled on, until he caught Erik’s laughing eye.

 _You’re so taken with him, I’m almost feeling a little bit jealous,_ his husband spoke when Charles poked their psy-link inquiringly. _Now, I think Kwannon is waiting. Shall we?_

 _My dear._ Charles grabbed the handrails of his wheels and started forward. _You should know by now that you’re the only one for me, after almost three decades of marriage. Can an old man not be proud of his lovely sister’s even lovelier offspring?_

 _He can,_ Erik agreed, _as long as he doesn’t neglect his husband-ly duties._

At that, Charles couldn’t help a smirk twisting his lips upwards, and he was glad Kwannon had her back to them as she led her visitors through the luminous corridors and past the spacious classrooms of the School. _When have I ever_ not _been a doting husband to you, my love?_

Erik’s answering smile said it all, what rendered their shared mindspace flooding with words and emotions unsaid almost superfluous.

In front of them, the headmistress had come to a halt a few feet from a screen door left slightly ajar and behind which a variety of minds dotted all over a wide area drew Charles’ attention. “You,” she said and turned to them, opening the door with a flourish of her hand as she went, “are lucky, for you have come just at the right time to take part in hanami.”

Charles’ wonder intermingled with Erik’s as they took in the sight before them. Of course, Charles had been aware that there were largely different gardening cultures than the neatly kept English lawn Mother and then the Markos had preferred, or the healthy rank growth both Laura and Ororo encouraged at Graymalkin Lane. But the Japanese School’s subtly orchestrated shrubbery and trees and rocks and ponds were simply out of this world.

Sensing their marvelling at what she had built from a parcel of mere waste ground in only a year – she was an empath, so she did not have to trust only in her gut instincts –, Kwannon stated matter-of-factly, “I let this garden be designed after the Japanese principles of aesthetic: Unlike your stinted style derived from the Old World’s palace grounds, we do not try to tame nature, to lay it all bare in one single look. We want a garden to represent who we as a people are. A myriad of viewpoints, only discovered if you move in our midst.” Her amethyst eyes sparkled as she watched them, and then her gaze returned to her students milling about at the edge of the water or on linen covers laid out under the seven cherry trees rich with blossoms.

To Charles, they closely resembled clouds, moving slow and steady over the lands, proclaiming the arrival of the most fertile season.

He – and his husband as well, judging from the alertness that suddenly inundated his psyche and surely wasn’t his – snapped out of it when the headmistress stepped over the threshold onto the rich grass and said, “Please, come sit down for hanami and enjoy our hospitality. The students have prepared lunch, with some regional specialities, and I-” Inconspicuously, she fished a small ceramic flask from the handbag that went with her dark purple business costume- “have brought sake, for the adults’ enjoyment only, of course.”

Charles had to physically restrain himself from pinching his husband’s hips as Erik whispered in the privacy of their thoughts, _Oh, will you look at that! She isn’t quite as severe as she dresses, though I’m still certain she’s got a sex dungeon hidden somewhere in the depths of this gorgeous buidling._ To make up for any insulting parts that could have slipped through to Kwannon, he cleared his throat and asked, “Thank you so very much, dear. But tell me, what exactly does hanami mean?”

“It signifies,” the woman answered and flicked her hair back behind her ears with a barely visible shake of her head, “ _flower-viewing_.”

“Oh, what a lovely expression! And what do you usually do at such an event?” Hands folded on his lap, Charles nodded silent thanks to his husband as he felt his wheelchair lift over the door-sill.

Erik’s voice intercepted Kwannon’s answer with badly veiled mischief. “Why, Charles, the name says it all: you _view flowers_.” With a nod to the nearest cherry tree, he sent the headmistress a conspirational grin and barely suppressed a yelp when Charles finally gave in and reached up to pinch the slight love handles his husband had put on over the last few years.

Fortunately, though, Erik’s quip had been recognised for what it was: A smile ghosted over Kwannon’s lips and her almond eyes crinkled just a bit in the corners.

Charles almost shook his head at what wonders Erik’s charm could do. In all the time since the woman before them had taken the post of headmistress, he had only seen her smile twice. The first time as a mutantphobic mob rallying against the opening of the Japanese School in front of its newly erected gates had been dispersed by the police, and the second time in an unguarded moment, when Charles had looked out of the window of the brand-new headmaster’s study and seen Kwannon play with a girl toddler in the grass, tickling her, summoning her softly buzzing psy blade, enjoying the company of what Charles suspected was no one else but her daughter.

Well, he could add a third time to the list now, thanks to his most beloved husband.

“Well, we do like to watch the sakura bloom and the petals quiver until they fall like rain,” the headmistress finally spoke. “But we also enjoy ourselves with food and good company, sometimes even dancing. Though I have to admit I am not one of those people. Now, let’s go sit. The students are already out of their minds about meeting you.”

And indeed, they were.

As soon as Charles and Erik had lowered themselves on one of the blankets beneath a cherry tree – Erik with an audible groan because of his backaches only heating pads and massages from Charles’ deft fingers could cure momentarily -, they were avalanched by dozens of pupils, all of varying ages, degrees of real interest and astonishing mutations. For the whole of the meal, Charles couldn’t keep a happy smile of his face, all through trying udon noodles and sweet sata andagi and talking mutant politics, X-Training and favourite colours with the eager students.

Then, when there were only leftovers sitting sadly on the plates, Kwannon raised her voice and called her charges to attention, requesting that they tidy up, enjoy a special one-hour break to digest and watch the cherry trees bloom, and then get ready for afternoon classes.

Her orders were obeyed immediately, and Charles knew this offset of the School had been given into the right hands.

Then, Kwannon summoned three small cups and invited Erik and him to drink sake with her, lay back and listen to the wind tell fairy tales in the petals of the sakura.

Charles’ head ended up on Erik’s lap, enjoying his husband’s fingers raking through his thinning hair, eyes closed and mind wide open to the murmurs of the students’ minds all around. Kwannon hadn’t been able to sit idly with them, instead she had gone off to train on the lawn with some over-eager students who were as incapable of staying in place as she was. Now, the whirring of her psionic blade cutting through the air mingled with the quiet chatter and occasional snores of the mutant children and with Erik’s calm, safe breaths over Charles’ head. In the distance, far, far beyond his usual reach – hanami seemed to have a relaxing effect on his telepathy, rendering it pliable and adventurous -, there was a sea of minds, blinking in and out of existence; people going after their daily tasks or sitting just as still as he was. After a few minutes, he realised it must be Tokyo. The city in which’s environs they had chosen to establish this safe haven for mutant youths, who were flocking to them from all over the country and even from the Chinese mainland.

When he drew back, he noticed one primal focus in all thoughts flickering about in the garden: the cherry blossoms. Their beauty, so fickle it could wane in an instant if you only touched them with your pinky. Their colour, radiant, a delight to look at, an image to be seared into your eyelids forever. The ease with which the petals moved in the soft breeze, some of them detaching already as if they were going on a long, long journey, into lands and cultures unknown.

Only one mind wasn’t focussed on the sakura at all.

When Charles blinked his eyes open, Erik’s stormy grey ones were staring right back at him.

“Hello there, handsome stranger,” Charles murmured, one hand reaching up to draw a finger along his husband’s slightly stubby jawline. “Tell me, why are you not enjoying the gorgeous view around here?”

Quick as a bird, Erik’s hand flew up to catch his and press it to his lips so he could place a feathery kiss right in the middle of Charles’ palm, where he knew they were both ticklish if they were in the mood. Then, he rasped, “Oh, but I am. Enjoying the gorgeous view, I mean.”

Charles chuckled, smoothing the flat of his palm over his lover’s cheek and delighting in the way his fingers caught in the crow’s feet around Erik’s eyes, the laughter lines around his lips. “You are one sneaky bastard.”

“Hell yes I am,” Erik growled, grinning his infamous shark grin, and turned his head to buss another kiss on Charles’ fingers, and then another, and another.

Shortly before they returned to America, Charles found himself alone in headmistress Kwannon’s study.

Her purple eyes shimmered like the wings of an exotic butterfly when she looked up from shuffling papers on her desk, and the rigid lines around her mouth relaxed at the sight of Charles vis-à-vis of her. “Professor Xavier. I had the opportunity to observe you and Mr Lehnsherr, and if you will allow me to say… The love conjoining you is a bond which I have rarely ever seen matched in strength. May your reunion still last long and prosper.”

At first, Charles did not know what to say. Really, he had never witnessed this woman to be so outspoken, so open with her emotions. And then, he realised it was a gift. One he would gladly accept.

“Thank you, my dear,” he replied and sent her his most genuine smile. “Thank you for being one of the people who stand strong and tall so that people like us can love and live as freely as we do. And thank you for letting us partake in such a lovely afternoon. We will never forget the cherry trees blossoming under Japan’s blue skies.”

Mutely, Kwannon reached over her desk to clasp his hand in hers. Charles squeezed back just as wordlessly.

There are no words needed when you love someone.


	27. Plenty of Warmth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 27 - Bonfire 
> 
> It's the end of April and the students celebrate by lighting a bonfire on the School grounds and going nuts. This might partly be Erik's fault, but it's not like Charles minds.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not feeling the fluff anymore *frustrated whining*

“Wohoo! Yeah, yeah, let’s go muties, _let’s go_!” 

Charles grinned and looked over at Erik, who was in turn watching John coax the flames of the bonfire higher and higher. There was a dead-to-the-world look in his husband’s eyes, the kind of gaze he always got when he had had to deal with any boisterous students or X-People for too long and wanted nothing more than to cuddle up in bed, maybe with a nice book and most definitely with Charles’ warm body right beside him. 

Unfortunately, he would still have to wait a while until they could retire to their quarters. After all, it was their Bonfire Night. 

Finally, Erik seemed to give in to despair, and with a desolate pinching of the bridge of his nose, eyes screwed shut tightly as if to block out the chaos unfolding in front of him, he turned and whispered, “I’m so sorry I told them about Walpurgisnacht. I really am.” 

Charles had waited for just that moment. “Oh, Erik, love. Don’t be sorry. If I have to be honest, I’m actually quite enjoying myself.” Gingerly, he unearthed one of his hands from the blankets he was swaddled in and took Erik’s from where his metalbender was twisting loose strands protruding from his deck chair’s back. “In fact, I think it’s nice you tell your extracurricular students about German customs. Little anecdotes are always engaging for the students, especially when they lead to an outing during such a lovely spring night.” 

“ _Outing_. You call this an _outing_.” Erik snorted and nodded at a few older students and a majority of the younger X-Men team members showcasing some kind of noisily modernised summoning dance around the towering flames on the clearing in the woods surrounding the School building. David was among them, as well as the Summers-Grey children Rachel and Nathan, and Bobby was just snaking his arms around his boyfriend’s shoulders from behind to grab the fire manipulator’s wrists and extinguish the flame demons fuelling the fire to take on roaring, ever-changing shapes. “Maybe I should have explained to them beforehand that this is in fact not about celebrating _like_ witches, but about the celebration of _burning_ witches. Not so much the message you want to transmit to young and vulnerable mutant children when the outside world already shows them nothing but hatred.” 

In front of them, John was pulling Bobby to the makeshift bar assembled from a few planks and cut tree-stumps and making his boyfriend pour him a rum on the rocks, the ice cubes entirely courtesy of Iceman’s power, of course. Behind their backs, Nate was riling Rachel up by giving her a few hearty pushes towards the fire burning about a winter’s worth of timber to cinders and screaming, “Witches, burn!” David was just standing there, mildly confused about the ongoings as he chatted with the Stepford quintuplets, who hadn’t missed the opportunity to drop by for a few solid drinks on th is mild night which was to give from April into May. 

Charles had to take a sip of his lukewarm tea to hide his smile. “Erik. Your pessimistic streak may benefit you in some situations, but this is not one of those. Just look at them. Look at our children. They are thriving, living the best life the School could ever have created for them. Also, in what you call the ‘outside world’, mutants have been largely accepted nowadays, and you would know that if only you read the papers with me someday.” 

With a resigned huff, Erik shuffled his chair closer to Charles’ so he could lean his head against his spouse’s shoulders and snag a few peanuts from the bowl on Charles’ blanketed lap. “But I like reading my papers alone. You always point out all the good happenings around the globe, and I just prefer to wallow in all the bad news there are.” 

“Then you can’t have had much to read lately.” Charles snickered when Rachel’s thought of daring her brother to jump over the flickering flames, _without powers_ , wound its way over to him. From what he knew about Scott’s daughter, she would even try it herself. 

Erik’s breath ghosted over his clavicles, down the front of his hand-knitted sweater (despite his fingers becoming less and less flexible, Erik’s powers stayed precise and perfectly apt for knitting the hell out of a long, cosy winter in front of a roaring fireplace), and Charles shuddered. “You’re right, mein Geliebter. Not so many bad news around nowadays, thanks to you and your darned School.” 

“ _Our_ darned School, darling,” Charles corrected him, and then yelped when Nathan actually took a run-up, leapt and just so evaded the licking flames as he soared over the bonfire’s peak, assuaging his impact on the ground with the relax-and-roll technique he had been taught in combat training. 

Multiple people cheered and toasted him while others joined in with Rachel’s booing of “Cheater! I saw you use your telekinesis there, you killjoy!” 

“Then best me, sis!” Nate boomed, scampering around the fire’s flickering edges like a chihuahua on crack. “Do it! Do it, Rachel, without powers!” 

“Young people,” Erik grumbled as they watched the ensuing competition about who could leap over the fire without frying their arse, _no use of powers allowed_ , of course. “They’ll get themselves killed some day if they continue like that.” Through their mindlink, Charles could feel his husband’s desire for their warm fluffy blankets and Charles’ arm slung around his waist swell. 

Then, David came stumbling over to them, just having completed a successful jump (Charles had seen him give himself a little push with his telekinesis, of course, and he also hadn’t missed that split-second where their son had sent away some obtrusive flames via his pyrokinesis, but who was he to judge?) and with a correspondingly adrenaline-widened smile on his face. “Paps, hear me out,” he addressed Erik, who sent him one of his narrow-eyed What-Evil-Scheme-Are-You-Sprouting-Now-Son? looks, but smiled welcomingly nonetheless. “How about you try the leap? You’re still so fit, I bet you’d put any of those braggers to shame.” 

The smile slipped off Erik’s face, and Charles doubled over in a laughing fit. 

“Uh,” Erik finally got out, raking a hand through his pristinely white hair. “David. Sohnemann. I might be fit for a person _my age_ , but I’d rather not break my neck jumping over a fire that’s, well-” He gestured vaguely at John laughing maniacally as the flames curled and shot out at people, making them stumble back with yelps of delight. 

“C’mon, Paps, it will be fun!” David insisted, jumping from one foot onto the other. 

Their son had turned out to be a wonderful grown-up. Sure, he had his little problems, but didn’t they all? After all, it didn’t cost them an arm and a leg to accommodate his needs. They could only be grateful that after extensive mind work with Moira and Charles’ help, his split personality could have been  mended. Otherwise, there would have been trouble. 

But Charles preferred not to think about that right now. It was Walpurgis night, his mutant charges’ minds burned almost as bright as the bonfire, and his sixty-year-old husband had just been asked to ridicule himself in front of everyone else. Really, what a time to be alive. 

“Go on, love,” he murmured and nudged Erik in the side, “go entertain the youngsters as long as you still can. I saw them cheat, every single one of them, so I’m sure you won’t be denied the occasional self-help.” 

Erik groaned, buried his face in the crook between Charles’ shoulder and jaw, until finally he gave a reluctant huff and started to get up. “Alright. But just let me have this-” Swiftly, he bent down and brought their lips together, effectively stealing a kiss- “for luck, of course.” 

“For luck, of course,” Charles echoed and smiled, watching as his husband followed David over to where the young mutants were already chanting up encouragement for one of their oldest teachers. Clasped between his hands, his cup of tea had gone cold. 

He couldn’t have cared less. After all, there was still plenty of warmth left in the world. 


	28. Vanilla Is Vanilla Is Vanilla

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 28 - Differences 
> 
> Charles and Erik go cake-tasting. It's a sweet if slightly divisive affair.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> le short fluff

Charles forked a bite of the vanilla-and-poppy-seed sponge cake into his mouth, chewed and frowned. His crow’s feet deepened, along with the worry lines on his forehead, and Erik wanted to reach out and run his fingers over them in a tender caress, slowly, languidly, a totally inappropriate gesture for the garden café they were sitting in.

“I don’t taste the difference.”

Now, that was just disappointing. Erik’s hand, already halfway across the pleasantly cool wrought-iron table, dropped back down.

His husband pushed out a sigh, eyebrows crawling over his forehead in a frown. “Erik." _I could be able to feel your dismay from here to the School, it’s so intense._ "Really, I can’t help it that I don’t taste the bloody difference between this cake and that cake and that cake.” He stabbed his fork at the plates of sweets dished up in front of them. “It’s just… well. Vanilla.”

Erik wanted to make that joke about how in bed, Charles had no difficulties to discern between vanilla and non-vanilla stuff, he really did. But now was simply not the time. “I can’t believe it. You’ve grown up loaded, you probably were to more fancy galas and diners and, I don’t know, _wine tastings_ than the American president, and despite all that, your palate is completely and utterly stunted. Charles, Schatz, even after decades of marriage, you still manage to surprise me.”

“I’ll assume this is a good thing. And don’t worry, darling. We’ll surely find another way to make the night sweet if we don’t find a fitting cake for our thirty years anniversary.” His husband leaned back in his wheelchair and sent him his obnoxious cat-got-the-cream smile along with a sensation that made Erik’s chest constrict, had him draw in a breath and grab a hold of the table’s edge. Even after what felt like a lifetime spent in each others’ presence – getting up together, going about their day together, retreating to bed together -, his thoughts went hazy at the intensity of Charles’ utter devotion.

There was no need for any more words when he finally reached across the tabletop and lightly nudged Charles’ hand into his by his wristwatch, clasping their palms together, firm skin on firm skin. Not even the spring sun shining down on them and painting the chairs and tables and potted plants in golden hues could equal this warmth.

After all, what were some differences of opinion in the face of their truly and unironically boundless love?


	29. One Lifetime Can't Break Us

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 29 - Hobbies 
> 
> Raven visits Charles and Erik in the garden of their small cottage near Graymalkin Lane.

“So...” Raven said and lightly perched on the raised bed’s edge, shielding her eyes against the weak but glaring spring sun with her hand. “You’re a full-time gardener now, Charles? A new profession, at your age – really?”

Her brother-at-heart turned from where he had his hands buried up to the wrists in the dark, fertile soil of the little cottage Erik and he inhabited now and gave her his I-Know-You’re-Joking-But-I’ll-Play-Along-Anyway-Because-I-Love-You smile. His eyes – still as clear and calm as the night he had chatted her up in a pub in Oxford and then proceeded to blush violently when she had explained to him that she was not, in fact, interested in men and that he could shove his ridiculous pick-up lines about mutations to where the sun never shone – locked onto hers, and he replied, “Oh, you know, it’s just a hobby. Like Erik’s knitting and baking, or you leading the X-Men. You should try mucking about in the earth one day, it’s quite therapeutic.”

She narrowed her eyes, leaned over to jab him in the ribs playfully and relished the way the laughter lines around his eyes and mouth deepened as he tried to twist away and failed miserably. “Hey! The X-Men are no hobby of mine, I’m putting my heart-blood in them! Because you’re slowly turning into the old fart you always were and can’t be bothered to lead them any more for fear of breaking your neck!”

“Now, now, that is not quite correct,” Charles said and focused back on pushing pea seeds into the bed at regular intervals. “It is not actually _me_ who’s at risk of breaking their neck – because being the man behind the curtain respectively the telepathy-enhancing machine does have its advantages -, but my poor old husband, who only ever whines about how badly his lower back is tormenting him every step he takes!”

“Who’s whining every step they take?” Erik’s voice behind their backs made them twist around, and there he stood, in all his white-haired, stormy-eyed, sinewy glory, with an apron tied around his hips (which were still as ridiculously narrow as when Charles had first dragged him into the mansion, really, how did he manage? Raven had turned into him more than once and found she had never encountered a similar waist-shoulder ratio) and a steel tray floating after him, containing a platter piled high with hamantaschen and the Xaviers’ finest china set, steam rising up from the golden tea in the three delicate cups. Well, Erik had no reason to be afraid. Decades of being able to hone your power until you had the finest control over the tiniest sliver of metal did that to your confidence.

Raven grinned and let her scales flicker at the welcome sight of her predecessor, all domesticated and far away from the fight. “Your lovely husband just told me your back’s not getting any better.”

“ _My lovely husband_ ,” Erik said and glowered into Charles’ direction – probably doing that mind-talk thingy so endemic to their relationship -, “may not be outright lying, but it’s not like I’ll become bedridden any day now. My back is _fine_.”

“Your back is fine up until the moment you seek me out to crawl on my lap and harass me until you get a massage,” Charles quipped, smiling triumphantly, like he always did when Erik and he were back on their seemingly endless bickering. Raven would know, she had had the misfortune to be caught in the crossfire of such mock-arguments more than once. In her opinion, it was unnerving, and annoying, and unfairly endearing. Ugh, really.

“TMI, you fossils,” she proclaimed and smiled at Erik when he gestured invitingly at the contents of the tray.

 _You are one to talk, beloved sister,_ Charles told her in the secrecy of their minds as he gratefully took the cup Erik offered him and then moaned with delight when he bit into his husband’s famed sweet pastry. _It’s not like you and Irene ever miss an opportunity to get all up in each others’ faces when you’re out in public. And I’m not only talking in a metaphorical sense._

She elbowed him for that and sent him into a coughing fit from how hard he had to laugh, while Erik just watched them with fond resignation and muttered, “Siblings.” Then, he excused himself to go hunt down two garden chairs and a table on which to set their little snack, so they could talk properly without Charles having to abandon his vegetable planting project.

Raven sighed, took a sip of her tea, savoured it. Then, she sighed again.

Charles, who had to visibly restrain himself from taking a second and then a third serving of the sweets Erik had placed on his lap for ‘safeguarding’ (how that should work Raven could for the life of her not understand), looked up. “Raven? Is everything alright?”

She wanted to tell him that yes, there was no need to worry, that everything was fine and that she was happy and content and utterly unburdened in her life.

But that would have been a terrible, terrible lie, wouldn’t it?

“It’s just...” She tightened the arm she had slung around her hips, hated the way it made her look weak, but she needed the pressure right now. “You and Erik, you… You are growing old together, and you love it so much, you’re so happy. I can see it, and I’m happy for you, I really am. It’s just-” Her tear-ducts began to sting. Oh, please no, not now, not here. Please.

Of course, her brother understood. He was a telepath after all. They might not have shared every opinion, and he might have been an arrogant and righteous prick more than once in the time they had known each other, but this he understood. “Raven. I’m so sorry.” His hand was warm and a bit damp as he took hers, and there were still crumbs of soil clinging to it, but she couldn’t have cared less. “I wish you and Irene didn’t have to go through this. I’m sorry. I’m sorry Hank and I couldn’t find a way to replicate your cell regrowth so she could stay-” He took a deep, shuddering breath- “stay with you. As long as you’re still young.”

She squeezed his hand, careful not to underestimate her strength and crush it like a dry leaf. “But that’s just the point, Charles. I’m not… _young_. I’ve lived a whole lifetime, and if it were just Irene- Of course, I love her, I will hurt so much when she’s gone. But… it’s only natural.”

There were freckles on his nose now. She had never noticed. Living with Erik, being shooed out of the house by his husband every day, that seemed to agree with her brother.

“It’s only natural that when two people are in a relationship, one of them dies first, and one of them dies second.” She inhaled deeply, felt her lungs, her chest expand, and when she let the air out again with a whoosh, the little insects flitting around in front of her face got caught in a miniature tornado. “But it’s my children I’m worried about. My girl Rogue, my sweet Kurt. I don’t- I don’t want to live and see them- them-”

Finally, it got hard to breathe. Her throat constricted like a vice, her nose hurt, the tears spilt. Charles caught and held her when she sank to her knees.

Between the sobs racking her body, she managed to squeeze out a mildly coherent sentence which could be roughly translated into this: “For a mother, the cruellest thing is to see her children die before she does.”

Charles held her. Her brother held her, and held her, his arms tightly around her, still strong and firm despite the years of life piled onto his shoulders. He could have started talking, could have advised her to go see Logan, who was faced with the same issue after all. He could have begun to babble sweet nonsense, like he had done so many times before, with panicked children, with panicked adults, with a panicking Erik. He even could have told her that everything would be okay, that not all hope was lost, that Hank would never give up on his studies and experiments and tests.

He did none of those things, and that was a wise decision. He just held her, rocked her gently, fingers moving tiny circles against her back and scalp.

There was the snapping of twigs and the crunch of gravel behind her back, and soon, Erik’s shadow was looming over them both. Without much ado, Charles’ most cherished person in the world set down the chairs and the garden table he had been levitating about, then kneeled down to hug them both, to enclose Raven in the safe, warm space of grief and anger and undying hope. The soft fabric of his black turtle-neck (he would never give up on those, would he?) rubbed against her spine, soft and heated by the sun.

It took a while for her to calm down, and when she did, she layered a face over herself that looked fresh, like she had never shed a tear, not once in her whole life. Charles and Erik said nothing and let her pretend.

They sat then, and talked about Charles’ gardening and book club he still organised for students who were interested, about Erik’s woolly creations and his sweet ones. Only when the sun was inching further and further down towards the treeline and the shadows grew longer to envelop them and the raised beds in their cool twilight did Raven get up and bid goodbye to the elderly couple Irene and she should have resembled by now as well.

“Maybe it’s time I went away, left my family behind when I still can. Travelled the world, saw more than baseline could ever imagine,” she told them tonelessly.

Erik’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed and his lips thinned and his hand squeezed that of his husband. Charles shook his head. “Not now. Not yet. You’re still the leader of the X-People.” The last blushing sun-rays pierced his eyes and tore them into purple swirls, two coin-sized maelstroms of hope unbroken even by an entire lifetime. “After all, they’re your favourite hobby.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry, this was not supposed to be angsty. Destique just kinda barrelled in and hijacked the fluff.


	30. What A Time To Be Alive

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 30 - Triumph 
> 
> Erik's bread-baking activity is interrupted when Charles calls him into the living room to watch the news on the telly. And it is a very important piece of news.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Only one to go now 0.o feels like it's been decades since March began >.< enjoy!

The dough for the whole grain bread gave way easily beneath Erik’s floured fingers. It was still warm from raising, shot through with tiny bubbles of gas,  and he couldn’t help a smile sneaking on his lips as he kneaded it, shaped it. Of course, it would cool off in a few minutes, but then it would be ready to be put in the oven and soon, Erik would be able to surprise Charles with a slice of fresh bread, still soft, with that distinct aroma only self-baked products could develop. Totally worth the time and effort put into it, especially considering it would most probably earn him a kiss- and then maybe some cuddles or, if he was particularly lucky, a prolonged evening in bed. 

At that thought, he groaned and popped his spine. Gott, a massage was most certainly in order. They would see about any further steps. 

From the living room, the soft babble of the television floated in, together with the warmth of the fireplace they had built to heat part of their cottage with. Judging from their laptop’s keys being pressed in an unhurried staccato and the copper and lithium components of its battery humming away gently, Charles was probably sitting on the couch, only listening with one ear to the commercials and news shows as he sipped his tea (with a drop of milk and three cubes of sugar, Erik could have poured him one in his sleep) and went over correspondence for the School which Ororo didn’t have time for. There would be at least three blankets layered over his legs and five pillows propping him up, and maybe the lamp beside the couch was on to cast a golden glow over the scene, because the clouds outside had laid darkness over the lands and Charles didn’t want his eyes to get even worse, so he wouldn’t have to buy reading glasses with even more dioptres. 

Again, Erik found himself smiling slightly. Retirement was making him go soft, and he didn’t even mind all that much. 

Outside, the first raindrops fell, and by the time Erik closed the oven door behind the first three loaves with a flick of his wrist, the water was hammering sideways against the kitchen window as if God had decided to try the trick with the Flood again. Erik knew for a fact that it couldn’t have been the headmistress’ temper who was causing that spring storm of sleet and roaring gusts of wind, because there had been a disturbance in the magnetic field for days now, announcing the arrival of a cloud front. He just hadn’t expected the rain to go down to business so hard. 

Automatically knocking his knuckles on the wood of a kitchen cabinet, he prayed that Charles’ seedlings were safe and sound under their plastic domes. After all, his husband had been so delighted at finally seeing them sprout and twist from the soil, and Erik thought it would be a shame if the smile Charles had sported that day could be washed away by only a few buckets of rain. 

A surprised exclamation of joy tore him out of his musings. He was already half-way across the kitchen to the living room door and wiping down his hands on his apron, careful not to slip with his woollen socks on the tiled floor, when his husband’s voice rang through his head, melodic with excitement and anticipation. 

_ Erik, you’re coming, good!  _ Charles said.  _ Hurry, or you’ll miss the news on telly. I think you’ll like them very much.  _

The TV’s volume was turned up then, the voice of a very professional-sounding woman (the kind that wore suits on which you wouldn’t find one grain of dust – not even with a microscope – and smiled when they dismantled your arguments brick by brick) flooded the cottage, and Erik found himself speed-walking into the living room with its roaring fireplace, crammed bookshelves and thick sound-swallowing carpets just in time to catch the TV news reporter smiling and nodding into the camera in front of the White House, just before the image cut to the interior of said building. 

Charles was indeed nested in a pile of knitted blankets on the sofa, sky eyes so transfixed with the screen that they didn’t even flicker up to meet Erik’s when he perched on the wide armrest. His hands holding onto their laptop laid limply on his thighs, his shoulders, which were almost as wide and sinewy as they had been when Erik had first met him, were taut with anticipation as he leaned forward ever-so-slightly. 

Erik huffed. So much for a doting and attentive husband. 

“Oh Erik, you’re a truly ridiculous man,” Charles murmured, focus never leaving the television where the typical sententious copy-paste speeches about freedom, the future and the occasional eye-roll-inspiring quip were being held by men and women in sober suits. “Why don’t you sit down beside me? Come here, will you?” 

Grousing under his breath, Erik stretched his old bones and squeezed in the space between the armrest and Charles’ warm body- only to find himself relaxing instantly when Charles set the laptop aside to encircle him with his strong, firm arms and pull his head down to rest on his shoulder, ghosting a kiss onto Erik’s lined forehead as he went. “Now there’s a love,” he whispered, grinning when Erik let out a noise that very closely resembled the content mewl of a sunbathing cat and shoved the accompanying feeling into their psylink. 

Then, the TV image cut to the oval office, and Erik’s breath caught in his throat. 

“Is that-?” he got out before Charles shushed him with a finger to Erik’s lips, a gesture so uncharacteristic he fell still immediately. 

And still, the question remained. Was that- Could that be- What was  _Armando Muñoz_ doing in Washington right beside the President, dressed all dapper in a navy-blue suit and sporting a wide winning smile while shaking her hand like it was no big deal at all? 

Gottverdammt nochmal, Erik must have been out of the loop  _so hard_ . 

“Thank you, President Irwine, thank you,” Darwin said and turned to face the crowd of reporters which had gathered in the rows of seats in front of the podium. “Thank you all, Ladies and Gentlemen, people of the United Nations of America, for coming together on such a momentous day. In this very moment, history is being written.” 

The President stepped forward to her own mic to make her address, but Erik zoned her out. There, in the background, flanked by security guys – the ones with those funny little earbuds you always saw in action movies and which were great for taking your enemies out in combat if you knew how to manipulate their metal components so all they could hear was soulless screeching before they broke down from having their brain waves disrupted -, stood figures which struck him as familiar. 

Charles’ arms tightened around him when Armando stepped forward again, that dazzling smile still on his face, not a drop of sweat visible as he most probably adapted to withstand the heat and glare of the headlights out of the camera’s sight. Erik didn’t pay any more attention to it. Instead, he squinted, scanned the faces in the back- 

That was Ororo Munroe, standing right beside a blue-and-red Raven, who was in turn accompanied by Danielle Moonstar, leader of the international New Mutants squad. 

Mutants. Mutants in important positions, one with a strikingly visible manifestation of her gene frame, none of them overly concerned to hide their heritage. Mutants, in the White House. Erik blinked to make sure he wasn’t dreaming, blinked again, and still couldn’t believe his eyes. 

_ Awing, incredible, extraordinary, isn’t it?  _ Charles whispered in the back of his head, and Erik nodded slowly, once, twice, his jaw going slack. 

Armando was taking some kind of oath on an expensive-looking copy of the Updated Constitution – the Bible had long since gone out of fashion – with camera flashes going off all around, with the headmistress of the American School for Gifted Youngsters, the team leader of the X-Men and the commander of the New Mutants smiling in the background, with the President of the United States glancing over at her new “Ambassador-At-Large, ladies and gentlemen” in barely veiled content. 

“What a time to be alive,” Charles finally murmured back in their living room, when congratulations had been exchanged and even more hands had been shaken. His breath was warm on the top of Erik’s head, electrifying, sending a shiver down his spine. 

Erik, of course, was speechless. Mutantdom had a representative in the government of the States, and in an enviable position at that. What a time to be alive indeed. 

He ignored the creaking of his back and joints when he untangled himself from Charles’ embrace, only to lean up and cup his husband’s jaw, their lips meeting at long last. Instantaneously, Charles kissed back, fumbling with the remote until he found the mute button and pressed it so the hymn of the United States would stop assaulting their eardrums. The kiss was soft and firm all at once, maybe not as frantic as when they had been young still and hadn’t had to worry about tearing tendons or leaving love bites that would take weeks to fade away, but no less passionate. 

They had done it. They had come so far. Their people were safe at last. 

_ Yes, we did it _ , Charles said, sounding out of breath even in their shared mindspace.  _ Yes, we have come so far, yes, we are safe at last. But, Erik- _ He pulled away to rest his forehead against Erik’s, their harsh breathing intermingling between them-  _ is it just me or does it smell burnt?  _

It took Erik a minute. And when he was finally there, when he cussed - “Verdammt nochmal, why didn’t you say anything, the bread must be charcoal by now!” - and wanted to jump up so he could sprint into the kitchen and maybe salvage just a little, Charles wouldn’t let go. Instead, he slung his arms around Erik’s hips, held on through his husband’s futile struggles and finally managed to pull him down onto his lap. 

“Erik, my darling, my love,” he said, his voice one big bright smile, “what do a few loaves of burnt bread matter? For the moment, let’s just be joyful and celebrate.” 

One hand raking through his thinning hair, Erik sighed. The grip Charles had on his waist was tight and iron-hard and very convincing. “Good, good,” he groaned in the end. “Very well. Let’s celebrate?” 

“Let’s celebrate,” Charles echoed and grinned, eyes sparking with hidden mischief, and when he pulled Erik down this time, his lips didn’t bother sparing his cheeks, his jaw, the nape of his neck, until Erik gave in and just laughed. Laughed with joy, with wonder, with triumph. 

Oh, what a  _time_ to be alive. 


	31. Our Best Is Enough

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 31 - Second Chance 
> 
> April brings hail, which in turn brings destruction into Charles' vegetable bed. Erik and he share a quiet moment while planting the seed for a second try at growing their own peas.

“I can’t believe it,” Charles sighed and unearthed the remains of the last seedling. “Hail in April, really? I thought we had got it over with all the bad weather conditions after this dreadful winter.”

Erik, pressing holes in the soil of the raised bed for a second and hopefully more successful attempt at growing their own peas and beans and courgettes, huffed and told him, “Charles, Schatz, you should know by now that winter will always make one last comeback. _Especially_ in April. April, April, der macht was er will, as we say in German.” There was a smile tingeing his voice honey-yellow, his enjoyment of the fresh morning air and the first sun rays flooding their psylink, and when Charles had discarded the miserable stalk on which the rain and hail from yesterday hadn’t left a leaf, he looked over to watch his husband work.

Those fingers, stiff with age but not any less useful. That waistline under the ever-present turtleneck, those shoulders, those arms, maybe not as trimmed as they had been that fateful day when Charles had needed rescuing from a muddy flowerbed, but still as delectable. And then his eyes, stormy swirls of colour. Through all those years, they hadn’t lost their sheen, the quiet determination of the spirit to which they were the windows to the outside world. Those eyes Charles had fallen in love with at first glance.

Those _eyes_ , which flicked up to lock with Charles’ own that very instant. “Are you waxing poetry about my eternal beauty again?” Erik asked and grinned his wide, sharp-toothed grin, the one that made his crow’s feet and dimples stand out so delightfully.

Heaving another deep sigh, Charles leaned back in his wheelchair and pensively propped up his chin in the palm of his hand, not minding that he was still wearing his damp gardening gloves. “I might just be,” he rasped, drawing out the words in a way that he knew made Erik furious with want and desire, even after decades of marriage. “Shall I write you a poem? Or a love letter bursting with flowery metaphors about your gorgeous wrinkles, or maybe an entire novel dedicated only to the sweet little sounds you make when you sleep?”

His husband’s grin widened, if that was even possible, and when he stalked over, he moved like water in a riverbed, as supple and smooth as if old age had no power over him. Only his hand reaching up to keep his broad-brimmed straw hat from slipping over his eyes made him flinch slightly, and then he was upon Charles, straddling his lap and slinging his arms around his neck boldly – which was no surprise, given that they had chosen a sheltered spot behind a copse of beeches and fir trees for their retirement cottage, well out of the line of sight of the School.

“I think,” Erik murmured, his handsome jawline sharp and his handsome lips curled at the corners and his handsome eyes as grey as the sky in September, “it will suffice if you just _tell_ me how gorgeous and lovely and beautiful I am. With your very own lips.” This said, he bowed down gracefully, both prey and predator, thoughts mellow and all focused on the feeling of their lips touching, moving together, pressing back and forth in a dance the knowledge of which only the two of them shared.

The seconds grew into minutes, honey-coloured, as golden as the sunlight reflecting in Raven’s eyes. The sun climbed higher in the sky, warmed their eyelids and shoulders. A mild breeze coaxed the trees into whispering tales of hope and freedom, and from somewhere to their left, where the School campus lay, whooping and yelling and the sizzling of energy flitted through the air, a tell-tale sign of X-Training scheduled this very day. Minds spiralled in the skies, flew complicated loops and flicks or shouted feedback to their earth-bound team comrades. Minds neither Charles nor Erik were overly familiar with, and that was fine.

When they finally parted, just a tiny sliver of regret reverberating in their shared mindspace, Charles’ shoulders were stiff, and even Erik’s knees creaked as he settled more comfortably on his husband’s lap.

“If you could have,” Erik spoke into the noise-filled silence, “a second go at life… turn back time, so you could start all over again… would you take the chance?”

He was himself surprised at this question, which had seemingly sprung out from nowhere, so Charles took a minute to contemplate his reply. Well, he would be lying if he told his husband he did not harbour any regrets whatsoever. There were relationships he could have salvaged, people he could have saved, suffering he could have cut short if he were to be reborn with the knowledge of what was to come, what he had lived.

On the other hand… “No, I don’t think so. I don’t think I would do it, because Erik, dearest, I have done my best, and my best should be enough.”

In the eyes of his husband, in the thoughts flickering over the surface of his mind like the northern lights, Charles searched for understanding then.

He found it.

“Yes. Your best is enough.” Erik’s hair was soft and smelled of woodsmoke and their freshly washed bedsheets as he leaned his head on Charles’ shoulders. “ _Our_ best is enough, and I don’t think I’m mistaken if I say that it has tired us greatly. We deserve to spend the rest of our days gardening and baking.”

“I’m leaving the baking to you, love,” Charles murmured and smiled. _You’re less of a safety hazard at it._

Erik’s deep chuckle he could feel in his bones. “Ah yes, indeed I am.” Then, he nestled his head in the crook between Charles’ jaw and collarbone, and all was as it should be: _All was well._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To everyone who read, gave kudos and/or commented: Thank you so much for staying with me. I had a blast writing most of these chapters, and I hope you had just as much fun reading them (even if I accidentally put a dent or two in your hearts), and I wish you all good health and lots of love and warmth and cuddles in the foreseeable future (and beyond) ❤ we will make it through this! 
> 
> What I took away from this fic: 
> 
> Erik:  
> Charles' lap:  
> Erik:  
> Charles' lap:  
> Erik: _It's Free Real Estate_ 👀 
> 
> No, in the fluffy sense. Get your mind out of the gutter ❤


End file.
